Drawing on the perspectives of disabled people, personal assistants and health professionals and managers, this topical new book explores how direct payments can improve further the integration of services, and enhance users' control over an ever wider range of regular daily routines. Buying independence will inform future policy developments and contribute to better professional practice in supporting independent living. It is important reading for managers and organisers of direct payment schemes, Independent Living Schemes and disability organisations involved in supporting direct payment users; community health services professionals and managers; and health authorities and local authority social services strategic planners/purchasers. It will also be of interest to academics and researchers in the fields of community care, health and social care, and disability studies.
First published in 1986, this study explores the increased public concern with policies of ‘community care’ and their effects on informal carers, at that time. It looks at the widespread evidence that one particular group of informal carers- parents looking after their severely disabled child- lack information, advice and a co-ordinated pattern of supporting services. The author, who carried out research on disabled children and their families for a number of years, describes in detail a low-cost experimental project in which specialist social workers set out to remedy these shortcomings. Drawing on the results of this particular study, the author argues strongly for widespread assignment of ‘key’ social workers to this and other groups of informal carers. Despite being written in the mid-1980s, this book discusses topic that will still be of interest and use today.
Like the UK, many other countries are facing challenges in devising fair and sustainable ways of funding the long-term care needed by new generations of older people. While the challenges are similar, their responses are sometimes very different from our own. This report draws on the experiences of long-term care funding - both the raising of revenue and the mechanisms by which it is allocated to services and allowances - in Australia, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Scotland and the United States. These arrangements are evaluated in terms of their promotion of horizontal and vertical equity; their efficiency and effectiveness; the extent to which they promote dignity, choice and independence for older people; their economic and political sustainability; their approaches to the provision of unpaid family care; and the role of user charges in long-term care funding arrangements. The report highlights the lessons from other countries for the future funding of long-term care across the UK.
Is community care really cost-effective? This monograph breaks new ground by stepping inside the households of informal carers. Drawing on an in-depth study of people looking after very frail elderly and disabled relatives, it describes the impact on carers' employment and earnings, evaluates the effectiveness of social security provision for carers, and examines how far the incomes of disabled people and carers actually cover the extra costs of disablement and care-giving. It concludes that, with the growing emphasis on informal carers in delivering care in the community, employment policies, services and social security provision all need to address more closely the financial costs currently borne by individual carers, at the risk of their own long-term impoverishment.
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