Manchester Alliance for Community Care

Introduction

There are important changes taking place in the way adult social care services are planned and purchased. The Government’s drive towards ‘personalised’ support has included the piloting of “Individual Budgets”, which give people who use social care services more choice and control over the support they receive and how it is delivered - by giving more flexibility in deciding how the money available to support them will be spent.

The Department of Health's report Putting People First (published in December 2007) set out the conditions needed for the social care reforms to work. The big ideas are:

choice
control
personalization
citizenship.

We think this presents tremendous challenges - and some potential opportunities - for voluntary sector providers.

Early in 2008, MACC circulated a discussion paper about Self-Directed Support and Individual Budgets, highlighting some of the implications for provider organisations - it's available on the "Manchester Updates" page (see the menu to the right).

There is very little information available as yet about how a wide-scale introduction of self-directed support will work in practice, so MACC is seeking to encourage the local voluntary and community sector to get together to look at this in more detail . We want to get voluntary sector groups together to think about what it means for them. This will then lead to a discussion with the Local Authority about how we can work together to make sure that voluntary sector organisations are able to offer the kinds of support service users want. We don’t have all the answers, but it’s important that we start considering the changes ahead.

To help keep you informed we've set up this small section of our site

Further information - useful links to other sites locally and nationally
Manchester updates - news from MACC about our work on this topic in Manchester
Resources - tools and sources of support for your organisation in preparing for personalisation (currently in development).

We'll be updating these pages regularly over the coming months as this agenda develops.

Health & Social Care

Introduction
Notice Board
Dates for Your Diary
Notes of Meetings
Reports

Strategic links

NHS Manchester
Adult Social Care
Adults Board

Personalisation

Introduction
Further information
Manchester updates
Resources
Brokerage

Safeguarding Adults

Safeguarding Adults Board
Vetting and Barring Scheme