King's College London

Dr Mary Baginsky, Emily Thomas and Professor Jill Manthorpe’s latest article has been published from their study on easements to the Care Act 2014.

'In England, “easements,” introduced via the Coronavirus Act 2020, were brought in at the start of the pandemic to support English local authority adult social care services. They enabled local authorities to suspend some of their mandatory duties under the Care Act 2014. Easements were only adopted by eight local authorities and for short periods, and the provision was rescinded in late 2021. This article examines why a sample of 16 local authorities, some of which were statistically close to the eight local authorities that did decide to use easements, decided not to do so.'—from the abstract

The paper is the third from this study, which was funded by the NIHR School for Social Care Research, and the final report for which is presently under review. The project page details all three articles (all of them open access).

This publication

Baginsky, M., E. Thomas & J. Manthorpe (2023) Reasons for Not Adopting COVID-19 Permitted Changes to Legal Duties: Accounts from English Local Authorities. Health & Social Care in the Community.