Social Care Integration

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Gray and Birrell (2013) explain that the integration of health and social care services has been a “dominant theme” in governmental agenda, in particularly from the New Labour era with the introduction of “joined up solutions to joined up problems” (Glasby, 2012). Throughout academic work there in a general idea that the integration of both health and social care systems would benefit users a great deal as there is evidence to prove that better transition from acute health care to community social care creates better and more positive outcomes for service users, their carers and their families (Gray and Birrell, 2013). Throughout this report there was a strong emphasis on integration being a key element in the vision for care to be well organised,…show more content…
The BMA stated that with the ageing population fragmentation is only going to make the management of people with complex needs harder within the system, this coupled with the report’s findings on fragmentation of services suggests that greater management of services through integration would benefit those who had many complex needs crossing various different sectors. Baxter and Bradley (2008) state that those who have complex and competing health and social needs often are not able to gain access to the specialist services they need as Hames and Carlson (2006) explain that not all professionals, especially GP’s, are trained to deal with complicated and complex cases such as those surrounding people with learning disabilities and their needs. Kodner and spreeuwenburg (2002) explain without integration service users can get lost within the system, quality of care is diminished and cost effectiveness is…show more content…
Although the government is willing to spending an extra two billion pounds on social care it has been stated that this will only cover the unmet costs that are in the social care system already and will not target the growing demand in social care services. The main problem with joint funding for both health and social care is that local authorities can feel like they are having to deal with the backlog of NHS funding problems (Weeks, 2006). Glasby (2012) has stated that the lack integrated funding and clear boundaries between health and social care has lead to the NHS taking a more acute care stance with those with long term illnesses getting less support than they have previously as it is being left up to social care
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