Council warmly praised for “innovative and progressive ideas”

Directors of Adult social services have warmly praised Hampshire County Council for the “innovative and progressive ideas” contained in today’s publication of Getting Personal: a Fair Deal for Better Care and Support. According to ADASS Vice President Jenny Owen, the report is an “invaluable trailblazer for all of those concerned that, when the time comes for the Green Paper on older people’s services to be published, the Government has to get it absolutely right.”

ADASS President John Dixon was a member of the Commission, brought together by Hampshire, to examine caring for older people and disabled people in the new and emerging contexts of personalised services, individual or personal budgets, and the wider social care transformation initiative.

Ms Owen said that, in many ways, it was the modest but ingenious ways in which the Commission’s report approached some of the more intractable problems within adult social care that most commended it. “Reserving more free social care to those vulnerable episodes surrounding hospital admission and discharge has much to commend it. As do proposals to re-examine the tax/benefits relationship and to make a universal offer to all citizens.

“In the coming years it is going to be increasingly important that a much wider tranche of people come to see themselves as stakeholders in, and owners of, the social care process – bluntly, to persuade them that there’s something for every citizen in the local authority’s `offer’. Hampshire’s Commission have wisely tackled some of the important issues raised with this and other topics. It will make important reading for central government and other local authorities alike.”

Further information on the Commission of Inquiry into the future services for adults in need of support and care