Into the Community: A Comparison of Care Management and Traditional Approaches to Resettlement1

The resettlement of people with learning disabilities (mental handicap) from long-stay hospitals has been under way for a number of years in England. This process has generally been dominated by the exigencies of the available services. A needs-led approach, emphasized in recent community care legislation, in which new services are sought on the basis of the specific requirements of service users, has been used infrequently for this purpose. This paper compares the process of implementing a needs-led care management approach to resettlement with the implementation of a more traditional service-led approach. It also suggests some important lessons for the application of a needs-led approach to hospital resettlement.     

Co-Production and Self-Care: New Approaches to Managing Community Care Services for Older People1

A lack of management theory which is relevant to human service agencies, combined with a failure to recognize the very large contribution which older people make to their own care, makes it difficult to deliver supportive services effectively. Self care by elders is divided, in this preliminary classification, into new strategies for everyday living, the reallocation of time and the avoidance of risk. Managers who understand that service users are co-producers of care and recognize the need to manage the users, as well as their own staff and relations with other agencies, are more likely to be able to deliver good services. However the management of co-production is at present only theorized for the private sector where ethical issues are less pressing and users are customers. In future a greater understanding of co-production and the development of theory and practice which will combine the management of co-production with the empowerment of users within the public sector will be essential.     

Ownership differences in the provision of outpatient substance abuse services

The authors examine the assumption of the 1980s that the provision and costs of substance abuse services, among others, could best be met by expanding programs in the private sector. The study presents a comparison of public and private substance abuse services, based on data drawn from a national sample of outpatient units, and develops a profile of treatment and financing within three auspice (ownership) categories--private nonprofit, private for-profit, and public. An input-throughput-output framework was used to assess the public-private differences within a wide range of organizational characteristics.     

An integrated system of engaging social workers and community volunteers in social care for the elderly: case studies in Taiwan

Integrating volunteers into social care is widely expected but rarely successful in practice. This paper discusses how the Community Care Centre Plan organising community volunteers to provide services to the elderly in Taiwan. This plan successfully integrated social workers and volunteers in a national system to offer service in local communities, showing a systemic practice of community care and a unique case of community-based and volunteer-based service. The purposes of this paper are to introduce the programme design and to understand how to integrate the mission of social workers and volunteers’ performance. The governmental policy and requirements, the role of social workers and the provision of voluntary community service which contributed to form the system were examined in this paper.     

The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies

Muuri A. The impact of the use of the social welfare services or social security benefits on attitudes to social welfare policies
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 182–193 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article investigates the attitudes of citizens and clients to social welfare services and social security benefits. The data come from a Finnish national survey conducted at the end of 2006. First, the article overviews the previous welfare‐state studies relating especially to the theoretical perspectives of self‐interest and legitimacy. The empirical analysis indicates (i) that a different operation of self‐interest can only weakly explain the differences in attitudes between services and benefits; (ii) that there is general support for Finnish social welfare services and social security benefits, which, however, is mixed with growing criticism among women and pensioners who are supposed to benefit most from the welfare policies; and (iii) that such determinants of attitude as gender, use and, to some extent, lifecycle have become as important as class‐related factors such as income and education.