Equality and Human Rights Commission

The Commission and reform of Social Care

Following up 'From Safety Net to Springboard'

In early 2009 the Commission argued for radical reform of social care in our original report, 'From Safety Net to Springboard'. Our work since then has included examination of key related issues for both providers and users of social care: access to Personalisation and access to Advocacy.

We have carried out extensive research and survey work in these areas and produced the reports listed below along with a short 'Key Messsages' paper linking their themes and drawing conclusions about Personalisation generally.

Key findings

The Commission is still of the view that greater 'personalisation' of areas of social care and health holds significant potential to maximise choice, autonomy, control and independence for service users, their partners, carers or families. However, the two resulting reports suggest that there will need to be improved effort and action to make personalisation successful. Personalised services do not yet adequately reach diverse communities, despite the fact that those groups are the ones that could arguably benefit most from them. There needs to be a major effort to make independent advocacy more available and accessible. This will be essential for many citizens to become competent consumers of increasingly personalised modes of care.

Reports

The following links allow you to download the individual reports and relevant Easyread and Welsh language translations.

Personalisation in the reform of social care: key messages

This key messages paper summarises recent Commission research reports concerning 'personalisation'. Personalisation refers to those services like direct payments, personal budgets and self-directed or funded support that do not rely on traditional service-led support or institutions, and which will increasingly be used to deliver care in the future.

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Download in Welsh language (Word)

Easy Read: Personalisation - A report about how some groups are missing out on personalisation

Personalisation means that you decide who supports you to do the things you like as well as with everyday things like getting washed and dressed.

We want people to have advocacy and help to make the most of personalisation. This report explains more.

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Research report 67: Advocacy in social care for groups protected under equality legislation

The provision of advocacy forms an increasingly important part of the social care agenda, particularly in relation to personalised care. Its availability, though, varies by locality.  The purpose of this study was to fill this gap and assess the extent to which existing advocacy provision is available to people in the protected  groups in Great Britain.

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Download the Executive Summary in Welsh language (Word)

Research case studies

We have published the case studies used for this research as a supplementary report. 

Download: Advocacy in social care for groups protected under equality legislation - Supplementary report: Case studies (Word)

Survey report: Making the personalisation of care and support work for all communities in the English regions

This report presents the findings from four survey projects carried out by the Commission in different English regions between September 2009 and March 2010, exploring how personalisation is working in practice for four specific groups of people who use social care services.

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Contact the project team

If you would like to get in touch with the advocacy and personalisation team please contact us by email: advocacyandpersonalisation@equalityhumanrights.com