The public sector should put more trust in business providers of social care at a time of tough financial pressure, delegates at the KM Health and Social Care Expo were told.

Andrew Ireland, Kent County Council’s corporate director for families and social care, said commissioning authorities should not set up a large system that seemed to function on the assumption that the provider was not going to deliver.

He said: “The expectation is that you will deliver, you are fantastic providers, and we wouldn’t be contracting with you if you weren’t.”

There would have to be a different quality of relationship between commissioners and providers, as users were given more control over the choice of services they needed.

Social care was at a crossroads, he said: “We’re in the middle of one of the biggest squeezes the industry and local authorities have ever felt.

“There is an inexorable rise in demand from growing numbers of older people, equivalent growth in the number of people with dementia, children with profound and severe disabilities who are surviving into adulthood, and increasing numbers of adults with learning difficulties who are living into old age.

"We also have downward pressure on the resource base that I’ve never known in my 30-year career.”

Hundreds of visitors, including many from schools, attended the event at the Kent Showground. It was organised by the KM Group in association with Kent Social Care Professionals.