Social care is a critical service to those who use it and to their family, friends and carers. It is an area of much national debate and rapid modernisation in recent years. Councils with responsibility for adult social care face a significant challenge to meet increasing demand with fewer resources while maintaining or improving outcomes for the people that use the services.
The Commission published a series of groundbreaking reports in the late 1990s and early 2000s – The coming of age (1997), The way to go home (2000) and Forget me not (2000). These reports focused on improving services for older people. The Commission also carried out a series of joint reviews of social care services in partnership with the Social Services Inspectorate. The Commission no longer undertakes such studies.
In 2009 the Commission introduced the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA). CAA looked at how well public services like education, waste and recycling, health and social care, the police and the fire service were performing and how well they worked together to achieve better results for their communities. The Commission's work brought together social care assessments from the Care Quality Commission (CQC) with our own knowledge into a combined area assessment and organisational assessment. CAA ceased in 2010.
Our recent studies on financial management and value for money in social care have covered policy developments. Financial management of personal budgets was published in 2010 and looked at the approaches to transition from providing services to providing personal budgets, the choices for allocating money, and how councils can plan for the financial implications. Joint working between health and social care has been the focus of three recent studies, including Joining up health and social care published in 2011. Value for money in adult social care was also published in 2011.