Radical Home Care: how self-management could save social care

Report

  • Public services
  • Social care
  • Transform
  • Buurtzorg

This briefing paper examines the challenges facing social care in the UK and how ‘self-managed’ teams can address them, based on a number of case studies of innovation in social care from across the country.

Recommendations

  • Ensure that people are aware of their social care rights, that frontline staff have the knowledge, skills and time to explain people’s options.
  • Develop systems with reduced bureaucracy that do not prevent swift action that can lead to better care and more preventative support for those accessing social care.
  • End the use of the ‘time and task’ commissioning in home care that prevents true relationship-centred care and services working in an outcomes focused way.
  • Move towards a model of commissioning that better reflects the complexity of the system.
  • Build and enable trusting relationships between commissioners, providers and staff to enable self-managing services to develop and thrive.
  • When commissioning new services, enable them to develop, and avoid overly prescriptive “pilots” that are designed to achieve unrealistic outcomes.
  • The Care Quality Commission must drastically review its model to ensure that it doesn’t crush innovation.

Download Radical Home Care (pdf, 0.4MB)

Read Ruth's blog on 4 social care challenges we can tackle with self-management

pdf 473.5 KB

Author

Picture of Ruth Hannan
Head of Policy and Participation