In 2023, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a report called Care and Support Reimagined: a National Care Covenant for England that were the conclusions of the Reimaging Care Commission's work over the previous two years. At General Synod on 10th February 2026, adult social care was debated following a speech from the Archbishop of Canterbury. That speech focused on the need for a National Care Covenant as a mechanism for reform, led by Government recognising the role of relationships rather than a system of impersonal transactions.
Church communities should have a central role not only in supporting those who are in need but help co-create a system built around prevention. Faith groups are already the place where prevention quietly happens.
A system that relies purely on data does not have local, on the ground knowledge. Data cannot tell you that three widowers in the same street are all struggling with loneliness or spot hidden homelessness disguised by sofa‑surfing.
Faith groups notice these things because they are part of people’s weekly rhythm as neighbours. This kind of relational awareness isn’t something you can automate. It’s built by presence, trust, and time. Any serious attempt at prevention needs this kind of intelligence at the table.
Policy often treats relationships as optional while buildings, budgets and contracts are seen as the real infrastructure. But for care, relationships are the infrastructure. Faith communities carry a depth of trust and continuity that few institutions can match. They are one of the few remaining places where people meet across ages and backgrounds. If the Commission is right that care is built on dignity, mutuality and interdependence, then faith groups are already practising what the system says it wants.
Social prescribing works best where people feel safe to walk through the door but the everyday work of faith groups meeting local needs through Warm Welcome spaces, dementia cafés, bereavement groups and pastoral visiting is already a means to achieve care for the local community. They are the backbone of quiet, everyday prevention.
If a Government led National Care Covenant aims to build a system rooted in shared responsibility, then it needs to include the groups already doing this work and listen to their lived experience. Therefore co-creation of a new system means:
- involving churches in local care planning
- recognising them in community asset mapping
- building early-intervention routes that use their local insight
- sharing responsibility for community hubs
- including them in the governance of preventative support
A Covenant without faith communities risks becoming a neat policy document with no roots. To ignore them in the formal design is to build on a house on sand. Reform will only work if it invests in the relational networks where people actually thrive.
The Archbishop’s call for a re‑humanised vision of care is not abstract. It is already visible across parishes and cafés and village halls. The task now is to align policy with this lived reality. If the Covenant is truly about dignity and shared responsibility, then faith communities must not be an afterthought. They must be part of the foundation.
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