resources
Supporting disabled parents – a family or a fragmented approach
Gerda Loosemore-Reppen, independent consultant from Kent, UK, reviews Supporting disabled parents – a family or a fragmented approach published by the Commission for Social Care Inspection. 2009, London. Available free from the Care Quality Commission. www.cqc.org.uk
Project partners were the Audit Commission, Health Care Commission, Ofsted, the Social Care Institute for Excellence, and Disabled Parents Network.
This is a report of an inspection of services for disabled parents carried out by the Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) in 2008.
The work arose because of concerns that the restructure of social services into separate adults’ and children’s departments may have jeopardised any policy towards the support of disabled parents. It has been alleged that there is a ‘turf war’ about who is responsible for this area. This can leave families confused and unsupported. A whole family approach, advocated by the Social Exclusion Taskforce (2007 and 2008) provides an opportunity for joining up the separate strands of supporting young carers and disabled parents.
The report indicates that there is a lot more work to be done to bridge the gaps between adults’ and children’s departments. Parents want better information about and communication with services. They want services that do not make any assumptions about their ability to parent and that look ahead and facilitate contingency plans to assist with managing in a crisis. The fragmentation of services impacts on disabled parents’ quality of life.
Only 17% of councils had collected information on disabled parents living in their area and thus could attempt to plan and commission services, while 66% of councils planned separately for the needs of children and adults. Only 12% of councils surveyed indicated that their policy focused on the whole family. The lack of joint policies is reflected in a lack of resources and disputes about financial responsibility between departments to support disabled parents.
CSCI suggests that only 30% of the councils surveyed had developed a joint protocol to clarify the respective roles of the council, its departments and their partner agencies. Without such agreements there will continue to be disagreements about who is eligible for a service, which department holds the purse strings and how the tensions between child protection and safeguarding, and the need to support parenting are to be resolved. CSCI expresses its hope that the move to direct payments and individual budgets may help families get the support they require, but local authorities will need help with this transformation of services.
The study recommends that a way forward is through developing joint working and integrated services; better information to feed into the joint strategic needs assessments; exploring the use of individual budgets and direct payments to disabled families for the whole family; allocating resources to support disabled parents so that undue reliance on family members can be reduced; skilling up the workforce to undertake good quality assessments; and working in partnership with disabled parents to develop and monitor local protocols and highlighting the needs of disabled parents to other agencies.
This report does not contain anything new for disabled families, but it might help them in fighting their corner with the gatekeepers to services. It will also clarify the direction of travel for good quality social care.
References
Social Exclusion Taskforce. 2007. Reaching out: think family: analysis and themes from the families at risk review. London: Cabinet Office.
Social Exclusion Taskforce, 2008. Think family: improving the life chances of families at risk. London: Cabinet Office.