6 March 2026 Blog
By Richard Evans, the MND Association's Director of Engagement
Last night, the Government announced a commitment to fast-tracking social care assessments for people with motor neurone disease (MND).
In a letter to Baroness Casey, who leads the Independent Commission on Adult Social Care, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Wes Streeting promised to ‘take forward immediate work to develop a fast-track process, or ‘passport’, that speeds up assessments and access to care for people diagnosed with MND’.
This should mean an end to the current situation where many people with MND are forced to wait far too long to access social care, leaving them living in unsafe conditions and not able to make the most of every day.
This is brilliant news, which has the potential to make a huge difference to our community.
We’ve been working with the Casey Commission over the last few months, and are very grateful to Baroness Casey and her team for the commitment they’ve shown to understanding and addressing the challenges people affected by MND face with social care.
We’re also very grateful to Wes Streeting for responding so positively to Baroness Casey’s recommendation, and with a speed that reflects the fact that people with MND don’t have time to wait.
But above all, we’re incredibly grateful to the people affected by MND who shared their personal experiences of social care with the Casey Commission. To support the Commission’s research, we arranged a workshop for Commission members and people affected by MND. We got a strong sense that hearing from people who have had bad experiences of the system made a real impression on Commission members.
In fact, I don’t believe we would have got today’s news without it.
For me, this is a perfect example of what we, as the MND community, can achieve by working together.
We provided facts and figures and policy analysis, but nothing is as powerful as hearing directly from people about the impact the problems with the current system have on the lives of them and their loved ones.
So today is a day for celebrating what is an extraordinary win for the MND community. Our focus now needs to turn to implementation. Having shown impressive speed in committing to this change, we’re asking the Government to now show the same urgency in making it a reality. The faster it does this, the fewer people with MND will have to endure unacceptable delays in accessing social care.
We will, of course, do everything we can to support the Government in this, and will update you on progress.