IT companies that produce care assessment tools were accused of creating the bureaucracy that dogs personal budgets by some respondents to our annual personalisation survey with Unison. One company named was Face Recording and Measurement Systems Ltd.
Face's managing director, Paul Clifford, has now responded to the charge in a piece that puts the blame for the bureaucracy elsewhere, with some of personalisation's fiercest advocates, specifically because of their preference for "brief self-assessments".
Here is part of the argument:
"Self-assessments were often so brief that they contained insufficient detail to enable support planning to be undertaken. Consequently, in-depth assessments had to be undertaken at the support planning stage."
"Perhaps the greatest irony of is that there is no hard evidence that service users prefer brief self-assessments. They told us that they preferred assessments to be more specific to prevent councils making decisions about them with insufficient information."
Is he right?
I have spent many hours working on personalisation issues, assessment and resource allocation processes, including working to integrate the FACE RAS within two local authority areas and I fully support Paul's response. Accurate allocation of social care funding will become increasingly important as most Local Authorities eligibility criteria covers those most at risk and this can only be done, in my view, fairly and most efficiently by using tools that are fit for purpose. Evidencing decisions is made much easier and more reliable using the FACE assessment tool. OK so it isn't the shortest assessment I've seen but it does cover what is needed and surely we owe that to everyone who needs social care support ? It is certainly what I would want for myself......
I am writing my paper at the moment on personalisation. I spent 18 years working in the Independent Living framework with a gentleman as disabled as Christopher Reeves - but writing about it is different. I am taking submissions from professionals who worked with the Independent living model and from those who either worked with or were involved with the "services" model.
Interestingly enough, there is hardly any comparison. Nobody wants to speak to the services model, and although the client was bright (educated to universioty standard), as she was "allowed"out so seldom, there are few people who can attest to her ability.
With the Independent Living model, I have been overcome with Submissions - and am now awaiting my last one - from Sir John Major.
In all my research, I have discovered that independence is invisible. This, I believe, is a very large part of the problem