TLAP Care Act 2014 survey results

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“Make the ‘system’ easier! It is such a huge battle to get support that sometimes it is not worth even trying. The energy it takes to fight the system is phenomenal”

The TLAP Care Act survey explored the impact of the Care Act on the lives of people with care and support needs in 2016 – one year on from implementation of the Care Act in 2015.

Results of the survey, which focussed on aspects of personalisation, suggest that progress has been good in some areas of the Act, but in others, is yet to make a difference.

Sixty-nine percent of the participants said their care and support made a positive difference to their wellbeing and health. Areas of major concern, however, highlighted by the survey were people’s ability to access support, and the variation in their experiences, depending on whether they were funded by the council or self-funded. There was also a marked difference between council’s perception of Care Act implementation, and the experiences of people and carers directly themselves.

The survey was commissioned by the Department of Health, and wherever possible, based on questions tested by partner organisation in other surveys or evaluations, including the Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool developed by In Control and the University of Lancaster.

Clenton Farquharson MBE, Chair of TLAP Board and person with a care and support need, said:

“I was a member of the working group that developed the Care Act survey to make sure it spoke to people with care and support needs. Now as chair of the TLAP board my message to members that represent the TLAP Partnership is that these results have spoken to us with a clear message that more needs to be done. We particularly need to draw attention to what we describe as the ‘rhetoric vs  reality’ gap, between what people with care needs are  experiencing, and what council colleagues perceive and say is happening when they work to embed personalisation”.

John Waters, Research and Evaluation Lead, In Control, said:

“The findings of TLAP’s Care Act survey do not surprise me. They reflect many of the findings of the Independent Living Survey 2016 published by In Control on behalf of the Independent Living Strategy Group. These findings serve as a reminder that there is more work to be done in supporting councils to align the principles of putting people first with people’s expectations that they be put first”.