Provision

Needs Assessment

- Carried out by a social worker, social work assistant, or occupational therapist

- May lead to the provision of domiciliary care, residential care, aids and adaptations

Domiciliary Care

- Can include personal care and domestic care

- Intended to help clients with daily living tasks such as getting up, washing, shopping, preparing meals etc

- Domiciliary care workers may be employed by voluntary organisations or private care providers

- Enables the client to continue to live at home and be as independent as possible

- Visits from the care worker can also improve life-quality factors

- One limitation is that the care is normally only provided for a few hours a week which might not be enough for more dependent clients

Direct Payments for Community Care

- Disabled people can choose to receive payments instead of domiciliary care

- The payments can be used to employ a personal care assistant to help with personal and domestic care

- Clients are able to exercise more autonomy. For example, they are able to choose who to employ so are more likely to choose somebody they will get on with

- Different to domiciliary care as care might be provided by a range of individuals and the client has little control

- The client has to be able to negotiate with the personal assistant so this arrangement is less suitable for people with few organisational skills

- Personal assistants may bully clients as they are not supervised by the local authority

Day Care

- Clients travel to a day care centre for part of day usually once or twice a week

- Day centres usually specialise in one particular client group

- Some centres are provided by charities and others by local authorities

- Day care may be provided within a residential home

- Day care provides clients with the opportunity for social contact, occupation and stimulation

- Staff monitor the health of clients and can refer them to other practitioners if required

- Can help clients to continue living at home

- For some it can help with the transition between living at home and moving into residential care

Respite Care

- An informal carer may have to provide extensive personal care, be available night and day and by unpaid so is often unable to take paid employment

- Respite care is an arragement designed to give informal carers a break from providing care

- Typically, the client will spend a few hours or several days being looked after in a residential home before returning home again

- Or another alternative is for a domiciliary care worker to spend a few hours a week with the client in their home allowing the informal carer to go out

- Enables informal carers to pursue their own interests, relax or take a holiday

- Can help carers to feel able to continue providing care whereas without a break they may feel the demands are too much

- For clients respite care…