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 empower those who use community care services (Braye and Preston-Shoot, 1995; Jack, 1995; Servian, 1996). Chapter 1 observed that both the White Paper on community care (Department of Health, 1989a, p. 4) and the subsequent practitioner guidance stressed that ‘the rationale for this reorganisation is the empowerment of users and carers’ (Department of Health/Social Services Inspectorate, 1991, p. 7). Job advertisements (see Figure 4.1) can now be found in which empowerment is not only listed as a task to be achieved but also incorporated into the very job title itself. The focus of this chapter is on the likelihood of such empowerment occurring.