The Impact of The Community Care Reforms
The community care reforms outlined in the 1990 Act have been in operation since April 1993. They have been evaluated but no clear conclusions have been reached. A number of authors have been highly critical of the reforms. Hadley and Clough (1996) claim the reforms 'have created care in chaos' (Hadley and Clough 1996) They claim the reforms have been inefficient, unresponsive, offering no choice or equity. Other authors however, are not quite so pessimistic.
Means and Smith (1998) claim that the reforms:
- introduced a system that is no better than the previous more bureaucratic systems of resource allocation
- were an excellent idea, but received little understanding or commitment from social services as the lead agency in community care
- the enthusiasm of local authorities was undermined by vested professional interests, or the service legacy of the last forty years
- health services and social services workers have not worked well together and there have been few 'multidisciplinary' assessments carried out
- in reality little collaboration took place except at senior management level
- the reforms have been undermined by chronic underfunding by central government
- the voluntary sector was the main beneficiary of this attempt to develop a "mixed economy of care"
Read more about this topic: Care In The Community
Famous quotes containing the words impact, community, care and/or reforms:
“If the federal government had been around when the Creator was putting His hand to this state, Indiana wouldn’t be here. It’d still be waiting for an environmental impact statement.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don’t rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions.... This ... appeals particularly to one who is unable to compete legally with his fellow citizens.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not that God didn’t care for them, but because you and I didn’t give, were not an instrument of love in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise, in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter.”
—Mother Teresa (b. 1910)
“We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms of slavery, war, gambling, intemperance, is only medicating the symptoms. We must begin higher up, namely, in Education.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)