2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

Involving older people in community care planning -Progress on personalization in England

Research Project

Project/Area Number	23730557
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
Allocation Type	Multi-year Fund
Research Field	Social welfare and social work studies
Research Institution	Doshisha University
Principal Investigator	NAGATA Yu 同志社大学, 社会学部, 准教授 (90339599)
Project Period (FY)	2011 – 2013
Keywords	個人予算 / 個別予算 / パーソナリゼーション / ダイレクトペイメント
Research Abstract	The introduction of polices to transform adult social care, combined with scrutiny of social workers’ roles, aims to increase the levels of choice and control for adult users of social care services. This study explores the implications of these policy changes for social work and examines the role of social work under the changes from the practitioners’ point of view. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 14 participants in the individual budgets’ pilot sites. While it has been said that social workers should move away from gatekeeping roles towards creative roles such as brokerage and community development, the findings suggest that the social workers were preoccupied with assessments, safeguards, and complex cases. We could conclude that social workers continue to be gatekeepers and risk-assessors in charge of clients who are not attuned to the ideal of personalization.

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