However, not to be totally cynical (you didn’t think that did you?), there was a fantastic presentation from Stockport ASC (Adult Social Care – this is the latest jargon for what most people still call the social services, but you didn’t need to be told that, did you?)

Look at the site:http://www.mycaremychoice.org.uk/how-can-we-help.aspx

It decided its old website was boring and impossible to find anything on (how many of us can say that?) and did a survey which told them, among other things that older people did not like to be thought of as people who had ‘needs’ and ‘care needs’. So they redesigned the website to enable people to answer simple questions through a series of positive questions like: ‘How do you get on with the day to day?’

Then you get a series of possibilities, not problems, so the site actively tells you what is possible. It ends up with a package of options and will soon allow people to calculate the costs.

This really would allow social workers to get on with the job of helping people make their own decisions. Rhey also have a guy who goes round in a van with the aids in response to the assessment, so that people can pick one that matches their decor and then the man fits it.

Why can we not have something like this for continuing care assessments, instead of claiming that some professional assessor needs to go through pages of papaerwork to find out the commonsense answer to what people want to be able to do in their lievs.

Big tick for Stockport.