Private Residential Care Research Articles

Supplementary benefit costs up for private residential care homes

Supplementary benefit costs up for private residential care homes

Public policy and residential provision for the elderly

In recent years there has been a growing concern about the best type of residential care for the increasing elderly population in Britain. This paper examines the response of the public, private and voluntary sectors to the provision of residential care. It looks at the relative levels, spatial variations in the levels and changes in the proportions of provision by each of these sectors for the years 1981 and 1984. The levels of provision are related to indices of need, available resources and the political disposition of each local authority area. This paper then focuses on the variations in the growth of the private-sector provision of residential homes. It was found that the metropolitan districts had the greatest proportion of voluntary-sector provision; and the traditional seaside retirement counties such as Devon and Lancashire had the highest levels of and experienced the greatest growth in private residential care. The key variables in explaining variations in the mix of provision between areas were indices of need and resources. This study has established that there are great regional variations in the mix of the different sectors of residential care, although it is not possible to offer a total explanation of these differentials. In Britain, there are substantial inequalities in terms of the choice of types of provision for the elderly population which have significant implications for local authority policy.

Petit Bourgeois Care: Private residential care for the elderly

This paper seeks to explain the oscillation in government policy towards the private sector of residential care of the elderly. It draws on empirical material from a survey of private homes in Devon and employs theoretical concepts from work on small businesses and the petit bourgeoisie. The paper explores the ideological use of such concepts as ‘family’ and the ‘self-made man’, and points to inherent ambiguities in applying those concepts to the sphere of private residential care as it is currently practised. Within the rhetoric of the political right, proprietors of private homes can be labelled both as paragons of virtue and as moral degenerates, which underlies an inability of government to maintain a coherent policy towards this sector of care.

The Right Approach to Social Security: The Case of the Board and Lodging Regulations

cost ceilings were set for local application and time limits after which young claimants had to move to another area or take a cut in benefit, with no right of appeal against this centralised exercise of the Secretary of State's discretion. The regulations were immediately contentious and have retained a high profile for more than a year, receiving legal and parliamentary challenge, pressure group campaigning and unusually wide media coverage for an intrinsically obscure item of social security law. What follows is a detailed analysis of the regulations examining stated policy objectives against actual effects. It will be argued that the regulations lack a rationality which can coincide with supposed objectives of the Department of Health and Social Security (D.H.S.S.), particularly since ample evidence was available at an early stage to refute many of their basic assertions. Rather, the regulations are explicable in terms of a policy which is openly discriminatory against certain groups whom the government sees as marginal to its political interests. Yet, despite some apparent successes in challenging the regulations, the law can hardly be viewed as allied to the interests of the groups affected by this measure. Attention has been focused on four aspects: constitutionality; social effects on time-limited young claimants; financial effects on the burgeoning market in private residential care; impact on local government, particularly the work of social services departments (S.S.D.s). We shall explore briefly each area in turn.

Private Children's Homes

SUMMARY The paper provides survey and intensive research material on the private children's homes sector. It is shown that this sector is currently in decline. Private homes are found to be sheltering children with long and complex care histories and to adopt a distinctive residential style. Although private homes provide valuable long term continuity, they are less likely to offer the same range of community services as do residential settings managed by the local authority and voluntary child care agencies. The private residential child care sector is an area that arouses considerable anxiety. Proprietors of private establishments are often accused of reaping inordinate profits from their activities (Hopkins, 1979; Laurance, 1983) and it is commonly asserted that their practice is inferior to that in the local authority sector. Thus, private children's homes cause considerable professional and political concern, especially as the contentious issues of registration and inspection have recently been the subject of a Parliamen tary Bill. However, the private sector has attracted little research scrutiny and claims of its proponents and critics have not been backed by reliable evidence. For these reasons, we thought it important to explore more systematically the current situation. This paper forms part of a study being undertaken by the Dartington Social Research Unit into children's homes. It is one of the projects in the Social Science Research Council Programme, Children in Need of Care, and arose from concern about changes in the functions of the so-called 'ordinary' children's homes. The traditional long term family group style of children's home is clearly changing as fostering is developed and other specialist establishments, especially for adolescents, are closing. The aim of this research is to chart these changes and to provide new information about the current situation with regard to the characteristics of the resident population, issues of staffing and organizational style. Such research, we believe, will assist with the future planning of services for children in care. From the outset, we felt that it was important to include in the study an examination of private as well as well as local authority and voluntary 0045-3102/84/040347 +14 S03.00 ©1984 The British Association of Social Workers