Centre for Policy on Ageing



Friend or foe? — towards a critical assessment of direct payments
Author(s)	Helen Spandler
Journal title	Critical Social Policy, vol 24, no 2, issue 79, May 2004
Pages	pp 187-209
Source	http://www.sagepublications.com
Keywords	Services ; Community care ; Social security benefits.
Annotation	Direct payments (DPs) enable individuals to purchase their own care rather than have directly provided services. This article unpicks the complexities involved in the implementation of DPs, by examining the need to reconcile the strong evidence of their benefits with emerging concerns about the wider consequences of their implementation. One practice that highlights the conflict at the heart of DPs is the employment of personal assistants, whose maximum benefit to recipients is at the expense of their rates of pay and conditions of employment that vary greatly between authorities. The author suggests a number of factors that need to be dealt with, in order to ensure that DPs continue to be a progressive strategy. These include: reconciling conflicting ideologies, such as advocating individual choice and/or collective provision; the need for political action to secure adequate resources; and the development of alternative strategies such as co-operatives to address the collective needs of DP recipients and workers. (RH).
Accession Number	CPA-040518206 A
Classmark	I: PA: JH
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing

...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing.