Meeting older people’s social care needs is all about “rationing”, says CSCI

It estimated that this figure could increase to 1.5m older people if services from informal carers, such as friends and family, were not available.

But against tightening eligibility thresholds, social workers and frontline staff at councils are forced to interpret council policy differently in practice by “rationing”, it said.

In CSCI lingo, it identified three “rationing” techniques used by council staff to deal with high eligibility thresholds.

“Rationing by directive” i.e. following council policy set by national framework
“Rationing by discretion” i.e. adapting council policy to meet the needs of service users
“Rationing by diversion” i.e. signposting service users to other non-council services to divert demand

This meant that judging who was eligible for care was inconsistent within and between councils, it said.

This isn’t a surprise to Community Care whose research last year found that a third of social workers said they would bend the rules to get a better service.

But with 73% of councils predicting that they will have to tighten eligibility criteria to ‘substantial’ or ‘critical’ needs in 2007-8, the situation does not seem like it is going to get any better.

If this did happen, 20% fewer older people would have home care and 25% would be left without social care services.

But, in response to the CSCI State of Social Care in England 2006-07 report, launched today, Ivan Lewis suddenly ordered a review of eligibility criteria.

What do you think about the eligibility criteria review? Will it make a difference?