Towards User and Carer Empowerment?

Abstract

The key theme of the last chapter was to place the community care reforms within the context of the broad criticism of welfare state institutions being run in the interests of staff rather than consumers. Increasingly, commentators talk in terms of the need to encourage user empowerment. Some have called this a theme for the 1990s (Clarke and Stewart, 1992). Certainly, it is a theme which was addressed by central government when considering the community care reforms. The White Paper claims that ‘promoting choice and independence underlies all the government’s proposals’ (Department of Health, 1989a, p. 4) while subsequent practitioner guidance stressed that ‘the rationale for this reorganisation is the empowerment of users and carers’ (Department of Health/Social Services Inspectorate, 199la, p. 7). The focus of this chapter is on the likelihood of such empowerment occurring.