Finding and Using Resources: Mobilising Resources

Abstract

This chapter, and the next two, are about various aspects of finding and using resources; this is often regarded as the essence of social care in the community. Sometimes, of course, the agency has a resource and all that is needed is to apply for it, and it is granted. Because the agency’s provision can be inadequate, however, there is pressure to find alternative resources which will reduce or remove the agency’s need to provide. Also, there is pressure to come to more complex and difficult cheap arrangements so that the agency can avoid simple expensive ones. These sorts of pressures are often covert aspects of support for a policy of community social work. While this is to be regretted, it is an inevitable part of social work life, and has to be taken into account. Social workers should, in my view, respond to pressures to use alternative resources with great care. Often, they are genuinely better for the client. Many arrangements for community care are preferable to long-term residential care, for example, but not all. To require a client to go through a complicated and unsettling programme of care by uncertain local carers, or to subject them to the risk of making their position worse, or to apply unreasonable pressure to potential carers may damage the client’s interests more than a simple reception into care. The first premise for finding and using resources is, then, to define the range of acceptable resources for a particular client’s problem.