Welfare Reform on the Web (January 2009): Social care - UK - community care
Care management unleashed: enduring ethical tensions 20years after the Griffiths Report, 1988
M. Carey
Ethics and Social Welfare, Vol.2, 2008, p. 308-316
Following the 1988 report by Roy Griffiths, community care was radically reformed. Social workers became care managers, assessing clients' needs and purchasing services for them from a mix of state, voluntary sector and private providers. This article suggests that two outcomes of the reforms have proved particularly problematic. Firstly care managers no longer spend much time with clients, and secondly, many aspects of care management practice appear to promote inequality, especially among already disadvantaged groups.
Evaluation of the Individual Budgets Pilot Programme: final report
C. Glendinning and others
Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, 2008
The Department of Health commissioned this review of the Individual Budget (IB) pilots to look in detail at what worked and for whom, and to check whether IBs were more costly than existing forms of support. The main conclusion was that IBs have the potential to be more cost effective than more standard care and support arrangements. The cost-effectiveness advantage looks clearer for some people with mental health problems and younger physically disabled people than for older people or people with learning disabilities. As a whole, people with Individual Budgets were significantly more likely to feel in control of their daily lives and support than the control group. Holding an IB was also associated with better overall social care outcomes, but not with overall psychological wellbeing.
A work in progress
J. Manthorpe
Community Care, Nov. 20th 2008, p. 30-31
The recent evaluation of individual budgets pilot schemes found:
- a profound need for staff training to bring personalisation into mainstream professional practice
- widespread concern about potential financial and personal risks of harm for individual budget holders
- complex issues around integration of funding schemes and management of budgets.