by Blair McPherson, a former director of community services at Lancashire Council Why such optimism about integration? It has been promoted for the last 30 years and we still only have isolated examples of best practice. From my experience when people from health talk about integration they mean integration of NHS services not health and social [...]
by Peter Beresford, professor of social policy at Brunel University and chair of service user network Shaping Our Lives With what confidence can social care service users and social workers look forward to 2012? With very little it seems. It’s not just the generally negative welfare and public policies that seem to be hitting disabled [...]
by Jeremy PorteusDylan Thomas urged older people to rage against the dying of the light.For too long, however, the limited housing options open to people with age-related care needs have robbed them of independence and choice. Many are forced prematurely into expensive residential care.If social care’s commitment to personalisation means anything, the sector’s commissioners should [...]
by Blair McPherson, a former local authority director of community services It can be a fine line between befriending a client and getting too close. One in five social work misconduct cases concern inappropriate relationships with clients. The General Social Care Council (GSCC) thinks social workers need more guidance. It is never acceptable to take [...]
By Helga Pile, Unison’s national officer for social care Social care staff are struggling to make ends meet right now; frozen pay, government cuts and rising inflation have seen to that. This is why our 2012-13 claim to the National Joint Council (NJC) for Local Government Services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland must be taken [...]
by Sarah Brennan, chief executive, Young MindsThe recently published Mental Health Strategy – No Health Without Mental Health – highlights that half of adult mental health problems start before the age of 14 and has a strong focus on the critical importance of early intervention to support children and young people. Intervening early for children [...]
by Nick Berbiers, social work interim managerWhere are we in social work and where are we going? If you wanted existential answers last week, there were two very different places to find them. One was a state-of-the-art conference centre, with speeches from the sector’s movers and players; live video feeds; instant news reporting – but [...]
By Alex Fox, chief executive, Shared Lives Plus, the UK network for Shared Lives, Homeshare and small community servicesThe government is busy gathering views to feed into the development of a White Paper for social care in the Spring. A key question being asked is: Can we move away from a system based on reaching [...]
By Dean Woodward, assistant director of Lambeth Specialist Youth Services Since the riots in August there have been many questions asked about young people, about police tactics and their community relations, about community cohesion and about funding. There are also many questions asked about what actually happened. Was it a riot that turned into looting? [...]
By Michael Fitzpatrick, who is a GP in Hackney, east London A patient who has just passed her 103rd birthday tells me that she has never in her life knowingly engaged in any form of sporting activity or physical exercise. In this she is of course typical of that cohort of women whose longevity is [...]
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