Does the Community Care?

Does the Community Care?

  • Submitted By: emm1
  • Date Submitted: 12/23/2008 5:30 PM
  • Category: Social Issues
  • Words: 3799
  • Page: 16
  • Views: 1021

Does the Community
Care?

S1 Community Care. Module no.46706
MA Social Work/ DipSW

March 2002

Total word Count (excluding bibliography) 3,348 Words.

Introduction
Over the past twenty years, there has been a considerable shift in policy and practice concerning the care of often the most vulnerable groups of adults in society. These changes have come about largely in response to the closure of large long-stay hospitals that housed large numbers of people with physical and learning disabilities, people with mental health difficulties and older people.
Documents such as Caring for People (DoH,1989), The Griffiths Report, Community Care: an agenda for action (1998) and legislation such as the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 heralded significant changes to the way in which services to vulnerable people were to be assessed and provided with care services, as well as bringing about a paradigm shift in the values and ideologies underpinning the provision of community.
Some of these changes, it may be deduced, may be understood as mirroring the policies and ethos of the dominance of the New Right in Britain in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, particularly in relation to the underpinning desire to cut public spending on social care and residential care. (See for example Ranade 1997).
In this paper, it is my intention to begin by tracing some of the key objectives and themes that run through community care policy, particularly at an ideological level. From this ideological base, I will then seek to explore whether the ideologies and objectives of community care are being met in practice. In doing so, I will seek to examine the impact of community care upon users and informal carers, drawing upon research and reviews of literature. In conclusion, I will pose the question, Does the Community Care? through an evaluation of the discussion contained within this paper and by an examination of the outcomes of community care policy. Throughout the paper, I...

Similar Essays