Who Cares? A backward drift in policy and practice.

The report’s author is Robin Jackson. Robin is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, and has a wealth of experience with regard to learning disability, having for example previously been Development and Training Co-ordinator for Camphill Scotland. Robin edited Bound to Care (published by Rescare 1996), an anthology chronicling  the experiences of parents seeking appropriate care settings for their children.

The report is summarised as follows on the publisher’s website:

“Robin Jackson offers a devastating critique of the current system of social care, particularly its impact on people with learning disabilities (intellectual disabilities). He argues that the current system has abandoned common sense and has allowed dogma, bureaucracy and market-forces to dictate how society treats people.

There are several layers to this problem and the report provides important information about how thoughtless policy-making is creating a new wave of institutional practice – although this now often comes in the form of micro-institutionalisation – people cut-off and isolated from real human relationships and lives of meaning:

1. Important concepts like inclusion and human rights have been distorted and misinterpreted, leading to thoughtless and inhuman policies.
2. Despite the lack of any supporting evidence, bureaucratic systems of regulation attempt to manage quality – while in fact legitimising poor standards and the on-going failure of institutional care.
3. The drive to privatise social care has merely reduced salary rates for front-line workers, while charities to increasingly ape the practices of the commercial providers with which they now compete.
4. The long-term economics do not add up, on-going cuts and the drive to profit have left the whole sector fragile and it is highly likely that there will be further organisational failures.

This important report follows closely on The Centre for Welfare Reform’s paper Regulation which also exposes the failure of the current social care system to respect human relationships and intentional communities. Robin Jackson’s report provides powerful ammunition for those of us who think it is time to ask some profound questions about the future of social care. This is no reason to go backward to institutional care; but it is time to question the current direction of travel and to explore new approaches which better respect our shared humanity.”

The 52-page report can be read online via the Centre for Welfare Reform’s website , via a link to the Scribd subscription service, or downloaded as a PDF file.

The report is closely argued, and Robin supports his assertions with cogent and up-to-date evidence. It alerts us to a backward drift in policy a that is taking us back ‘to the institutional practices of the early 20th century’. Robin cites the following:

• Ideas like inclusion or normalisation have been interpreted in an overly simplistic manner by some academics and thought-leaders. Too often one experience of disability tends to dominate all other experiences.
• Some strategies of political activism that aim to defend the rights of disabled people effectively exclude many people  with intellectual disabilities or their primary allies. Such exclusive strategies don’t work for people with intellectual disabilities.
• Charities, who society expects to protect the interests of people with intellectual disabilities, are now largely service providers and are increasingly passive in the face of pressure from central or local government.
• Regulation, despite its many and repeated failings, is seen as the primary method for ensuring the safety of people.This has led to an increasingly bureaucratic and destructive mentality that corrodes human relationships.
• The increasing marketisation of social care has merely eroded the quality of support, and reduced salaries, skills and securities.
• Technological solutions – cameras and alarms – rather than people are increasingly seen as the only feasible solution to the growing funding crisis in social care.
• The dependence of the sector on private-sector care homes, often dependent on highly leveraged debt, makes it likely that many private services will collapse as the economy continues to falter and as social care continues to be cut.

Let us hope that Robin’s report contributes in some way to a halt in that drift. Rescare endorses its conclusions and arguments. Please alert others to its publication. (We would welcome feedback from Rescare members with their experiences and opinions).