title: Progress and problems in developing outcomes-focused social care services for older people in England.
abstract: Social care services for adults are increasingly required to focus on achieving the outcomes that users aspire to, rather than on service inputs or provider concerns. This paper reports a study aimed at assessing progress in developing outcomes-focused services for older people and the factors that help and hinder this. It describes the current policy context and discusses the social care service outcomes desired by older people. It then reports on a postal survey that identified over 70 outcomes-focused social care initiatives across England and Wales, and case studies of progress in developing outcomes-focused social care services in six localities. The study found progress in developing outcomes-focused services was relatively recent and somewhat fragmented. Developments in intermediate care and re-ablement services, focusing on change outcomes, were marked; however, there appeared to be a disjunction between these and the capacity of home care services to address desired maintenance outcomes. Process outcomes were addressed across a range of re-ablement, day care and residential services. The paper concludes by discussing some of the challenges in developing outcomes-focused social care services.
authors.affiliation: Social Policy Research Unit, University of York, York, UK. cg20@york.ac.uk
authors.forename: Caroline
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Glendinning
authors.forename: Susan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Clarke
authors.forename: Philippa
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Hare
authors.forename: Jane
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Maddison
authors.forename: Liz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Newbronner
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D004059:Diffusion of Innovation; D004739:England; D006801:Humans; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care; D012947:Social Work / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014852:Wales