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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Facing up to underfunding: equity and retrenchment in community care | | Author(s) | Tim Blackman |
| Journal title | Social Policy and Administration, vol 32, no 2, June 1998 |
| Pages | pp 182-195 |
| Keywords | Services ; Community care ; Local Authority ; Grant allocation. |
| Annotation | Local social services departments in the United Kingdom (UK) are expected to distribute their cash-limited budgets for community care in ways that achieve an equitable allocation of resources in situations where, with present levels of funding, they cannot meet all the needs with which they are presented. This paper discusses a case study of the introduction of a "needs-based" formula to allocate a local authority's budget for home care services and a follow-up survey to investigate whether services reached the people intended to benefit. The article argues that the "gatekeeping" role of community care assessments is important to safeguard equity without the inflexibility of highly standardised tests of eligibility. However, with the new Labour government seeking to reduce dependency on public expenditure, and a growing lobby for national standards of social care, it will be increasingly important that local authorities justify their different practices with evidence about how they relate to local needs. (AKM). |
| Accession Number | CPA-980610407 A |
| Classmark | I: PA: PE: QCG |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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