The Social Care System: Beyond Repair or Missing Vital Parts?

Putting People First and the Social Care Reform Grant have been presented as ‘once in a lifetime’ opportunities to get the ‘broken’ social care system fit for purpose. There is a risk that the guidance attached to the reform grant will force councils to focus on the transformation of processes and systems, rather than on what really matters, the transformation of the lives of disabled people. Like in Control, Putting People First locates the problem in ‘resource allocation’ and proposes that councils develop new systems to improve this. An alternative view is that the transformation of the lives of disabled people can be delivered by improvements in the components of the current system. How these improvements can be funded is also considered.