Four studies from SPRU at York University UK

1. This study looked at ways of supporting physically disabled young adults to achieve their preferred levels of control over their care and support arrangements. It asked the questions:

What are physically disabled young adults experiences of managing their care and support arrangements?
How can they be better supported?

The four page research summary is available here: http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/pdf/sscrToto.pdf

2. Very little is known about the many adults in England who purchase social care services and support using their own, private resources. However, rising eligibility thresholds for local authority-funded care combined with population ageing means the numbers of self-funders are likely to increase. The importance to local authorities of self-funders is also increasing with the implementation of the Care Act 2014. We reviewed the evidence available about self-funders for the NIHR SSCR. It contains evidence on:

the size of the evidence base
characteristics of the self-funding population
information and advice sought by and available to self-funders
providers' experiences of self-funders.

A self-funder was defined as: someone who pays for all of their social care or support from their own private resources or 'tops up' their local authority residential or domiciliary care funding with additional private spending.

Social care was defined as care homes (both with and without nursing), domiciliary care, day care and care received as part of extra-care housing.

The report is available to read here: http://php.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/2871/

3. Carers are entitled to a personal budget of their own which is used to support them in their caring role. We researched the approaches that local authorities in England were using to determine the eligibility for carer PBs and also how different levels of PB were determined.

We found that:

'regular and substantial' care was the initial eligibility threshold
19 to 35 hours per week of care were used as minimum thresholds
systems grading carers relationships were also used, with those at risk of breakdown being given more support
grading of need according to the effect of care giving on personal health and well-being was also used. Those with high impact being given PBs.
some authorities used a points based system across a range of factors in the caring relationship, there were pros and cons to this approach with fears of losing sensitivity to individual needs being weighed against the desire for more consistent practice.

The implementation of the Care Act 2015 will strengthen carers' rights and place a duty on local authorities to meet carers' support needs equitably and transparently. This study suggests area where guidance is needed to make this happen.

You can download the three page summary here: http://php.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/2859/

4. We have looked into the possibility of safeguarding problems in relation to the use of personal budgets (PBs) in social care. There have been fears that people using personal budgets to pay for their care were at greater risk of abuse and neglect than people using conventionally commissioned services, particularly if they hired unregulated workers or relied on relatives or others to manage their money. The study found that:

there was no strong evidence to suggest higher levels of safeguarding referrals among people with personal budgets compared with all social care users
in the three councils studied in depth, although safeguarding referrals overall were equal to those for conventional services, there was a statistically significant higher proportion of referrals for financial abuse and abuse by home care workers in people using PBs
there is a need for social workers to help people to balance risk and choice when they use PBs
there were concerns about the amount of information people using PBs had to support their role as an employer.

The study provides evidence of a reworking of traditional relationships between social workers and people using services. It supports the continued need for well-trained professional involvement in safeguarding, given the complexity of some of the judgements that need to be made, especially in interpreting the relative importance of family dynamics and other relationships as pointers to potential abuse.

The summary of the research can be downloaded here: http://php.york.ac.uk/inst/spru/pubs/2855/