Bleddyn Davies

In 1980 old people comprised over half the clients of Local Authority Social Services Departments and accounted for about half of their resources, yet until then residential care of the aged had been a backwater of both research and practice. During the 1970s a large research literature had developed on the subject, particularly in the United States. However, studies had been partial in their focus on issues, making no attempt to draw together their arguments to create a model that described and evaluated competing theories about what it is that determines the quality of residential life. Originally published in 1981, Bleddyn Davies and Martin Knapp filled that gap in this book. The authors discuss not only the theoretical arguments about residential care and the degree to which those theories had been verified by research, but also how far the factors considered to be important had been successfully measured, considering the choices to be made between alternative varieties of care that had grown up so rapidly in the previous five years. The authors conclude with an analysis of how their approach should contribute to the discussion of issues that was to be faced by British policy-makers in the 1980s as our welfare systems attempted to cope with the increasing numbers of the very old.

In 1980 old people comprised over half the clients of Local Authority Social Services Departments and accounted for about half of their resources, yet until then residential care of the aged had been a backwater of both research and practice. During the 1970s a large research literature had developed on the subject, particularly in the United States. However, studies had been partial in their focus on issues, making no attempt to draw together their arguments to create a model that described and evaluated competing theories about what it is that determines the quality of residential life. Originally published in 1981, Bleddyn Davies and Martin Knapp filled that gap in this book. The authors discuss not only the theoretical arguments about residential care and the degree to which those theories had been verified by research, but also how far the factors considered to be important had been successfully measured, considering the choices to be made between alternative varieties of care that had grown up so rapidly in the previous five years. The authors conclude with an analysis of how their approach should contribute to the discussion of issues that was to be faced by British policy-makers in the 1980s as our welfare systems attempted to cope with the increasing numbers of the very old.

First published in 1986, Matching Resources to Needs describes the PSSRU’s community care approach and analyses the first of the community care projects, a seminal set of experiments in the care of the elderly at high risk of institutional long-term care. The experiments create field structures which provide incentives to improve efficiency, decentralised power over resources being balanced by enhanced accountability. The first part explains the approach, analyses the causes of inefficiency in ~British social care, and reviews British and American evidence about the relationships between resources, recipient characteristics and outcomes. The approach is compared with some two dozen American experiments hitherto unknown in the UK. It describes the design of the project and its evaluation. The authors then examine the experimental results. They show that cost and welfare effects are better and the costs of outcomes are lower for recipients of community car. The third part of the book uses observational and other data to explore the relationships between structures, assumptive worlds, causal processes and outcomes and their costs. It also analyses the performance of the core tasks of entrepreneurial case management for types of case. The book concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of this approach to community care.

First published in 1998, the aims of this book are: the comparison of community care service and financing systems, the comparison of reform arguments and history over the last decade, the comparison of who uses how much of what services, and with what impact on their needs and the probability of having to enter institutions for long-term care. The book breaks new ground by comparing systems from a new perspective and describing contemporary reform argument and proposals for the first time in the English language. It presents new evidence from the most ambitious collection and analysis of quantative data so far made for the comparison of the two countries (based on matched area samples collecting comparable information about cohorts of new users on two or more occasions). The book also shows how the need-related circumstances of users differ between countries and within each country between areas. The book shows how and why higher levels of the French cash benefit for community care had more effect on the central policy goal than its British counterpart, how higher levels of services generally had little impact on it in either country, but on average, how the effect of the British services were much greater.

This title was first published in 2000: Equity and Efficiency Policy provides a completely new perspective on post-reform community care, analyzes its fairness, effectiveness and efficiency in a new way and uses its powerful new techniques applied to a major national collection of evidence to suggest how to develop the Modernization Agenda. It - describes, for the first time, how differences in the levels of each of the main services alone and in combination affect a wide range of user and carer benefits; - uses this knowledge to analyze in a new way and make policy proposals about some of the pressing policy issues of the government’s Modernization Agenda.

This title was first published in 2000: Caring for Older People provides a unique insight into the world of community care in the 1990’s. It presents findings from a national study of social care from the perspectives of older service users, their carers and care managers. Descriptive findings from this longitudinal study - conducted by the PSSRU from 1994 and funded by the Department of Health - are set in the context of the history of community care and developments since the passage of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. The study’s findings highlight important challenges for policy and practice development in the new millennium.

First published in 1998, the aims of this book are: the comparison of community care service and financing systems, the comparison of reform arguments and history over the last decade, the comparison of who uses how much of what services, and with what impact on their needs and the probability of having to enter institutions for long-term care. The book breaks new ground by comparing systems from a new perspective and describing contemporary reform argument and proposals for the first time in the English language. It presents new evidence from the most ambitious collection and analysis of quantative data so far made for the comparison of the two countries (based on matched area samples collecting comparable information about cohorts of new users on two or more occasions). The book also shows how the need-related circumstances of users differ between countries and within each country between areas. The book shows how and why higher levels of the French cash benefit for community care had more effect on the central policy goal than its British counterpart, how higher levels of services generally had little impact on it in either country, but on average, how the effect of the British services were much greater.

First published in 1986, Matching Resources to Needs describes the PSSRU’s community care approach and analyses the first of the community care projects, a seminal set of experiments in the care of the elderly at high risk of institutional long-term care. The experiments create field structures which provide incentives to improve efficiency, decentralised power over resources being balanced by enhanced accountability. The first part explains the approach, analyses the causes of inefficiency in ~British social care, and reviews British and American evidence about the relationships between resources, recipient characteristics and outcomes. The approach is compared with some two dozen American experiments hitherto unknown in the UK. It describes the design of the project and its evaluation. The authors then examine the experimental results. They show that cost and welfare effects are better and the costs of outcomes are lower for recipients of community car. The third part of the book uses observational and other data to explore the relationships between structures, assumptive worlds, causal processes and outcomes and their costs. It also analyses the performance of the core tasks of entrepreneurial case management for types of case. The book concludes with a discussion of the broader implications of this approach to community care.

This title was first published in 2000: Caring for Older People provides a unique insight into the world of community care in the 1990’s. It presents findings from a national study of social care from the perspectives of older service users, their carers and care managers. Descriptive findings from this longitudinal study - conducted by the PSSRU from 1994 and funded by the Department of Health - are set in the context of the history of community care and developments since the passage of the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act. The study’s findings highlight important challenges for policy and practice development in the new millennium.

This title was first published in 2000: Equity and Efficiency Policy provides a completely new perspective on post-reform community care, analyzes its fairness, effectiveness and efficiency in a new way and uses its powerful new techniques applied to a major national collection of evidence to suggest how to develop the Modernization Agenda. It - describes, for the first time, how differences in the levels of each of the main services alone and in combination affect a wide range of user and carer benefits; - uses this knowledge to analyze in a new way and make policy proposals about some of the pressing policy issues of the government’s Modernization Agenda.