Is The Legal Training Adequate in Health and Social Care re Care Act & Statutory Guidance?
A lot of cases in my advocacy work relate to reminding authorities of the need
for personalisation and giving people independence, choice and control. After
all, this is what the purpose of Health and Social Care is, to give people the
opportunity to live.
I
seem to spend substantial amounts of time advising people on the law and the
statutory guidance (which is almost law and gives a much broader personalised
view behind the legislation). It is not just members of the public, but believe
it or not I often get approached by health and social workers (sometimes in
senior positions) to ask for my help. Whether it is to find specific bits of
legislation to argue clients cases, to the management on behalf of clients or
(for management) to give an independent view and speak to users to help put
their minds at rest.
I
know people say and I whole heartily agree that the law is not everything in
Health and Social Care. What we are trying to achieve is better lives and again
I fully support this notion. To this I have to advice that you look at the
statutory guidance, it is fully personalised and if followed it actually gives
many ideas and support for these, including self assessment (assisted),
minimising paperwork, better open care markets, disability related expenditure,
coproduction, involvement and many more; which would often save the money to
cash strapped authorities.
The
point I am trying to make is that like any building and improvement work, you
have to start with a strong base line. Usually, the law and then build on that.
Make it firm and strong and you can then put weight on it to build to lofty
impossible heights. My concern is that we do not have that yet. This is
highlighted in the policy paper People at the Heart of Care: adult social care
reform Updated 18 March 2022, where under ‘Overview of Care Act 2014' -
it states ‘we acknowledge that the full spirit of the Care Act is not currently
being met’.
My
experience is that it is not just the spirit, but it goes beyond that. People
just do not know the law or the statutory guidance. We have been writing about
these things for a while. Whenever we write we always try to use statistics to
back up our theories or assumptions. In this case not having ready data to use,
we asked for some.
For
those in the UK who are social workers how much of your training included the
Care Act and Statutory guidance?
Less
than 10% 75 votes
25% 25 votes
50% 22
votes
75% 4 votes
As
you can see in the poll of UK Social workers where 126 responded over 50% off
respondents said that their training included less than 10% of the Care Act and
Statutory Guidance. What concerned me more is that the older social workers who
came in before the Care Act was introduced (probably most of the senior staff
or managers) were stating they had not had any as it was before their
time. My experience with Health and the statutory guidance for Personal Health
Budget holders shows similar issues.
To
me this is really concerning and highlights the need for steps to be taken to
immediately retrain much of the Care and Health organisations. It has been a
concern of mine for a while. A lot of the decisions or arguments put forward by
authorities have very little legal or even personalised basis. The Care Act is
the basis of the job and underpins a lot of what people talk about, especially
wellbeing principles (sec 1 of the Act) and personalisation. If you do not know
the basics then what is anything you do or say built on? If we do not fix
and strengthen the base, everything else will always be on shaky ground.
As a suggestion I would recommend that authorties consider putting in place a legal lead in each department who is given the time and skills to develop the legal knowledge required. In cases of dispute this person can be turned to much like a clinical lead in health.
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