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The aim of this chapter is to explore changes since the COVID-19 pandemic in welfare policies and services for people with learning disabilities and autism in England, focusing mainly on educational and health and social care sectors.

A review of official policy documents published on GOV.UK from January 2020 to May 2021 has been conducted using keywords on the topic in question, and semi-structured interviews took place in 2022 with four key informants/stakeholders working in health and social care or education sectors of people with learning disability or autism in England.

The main findings indicate a need to shift practices online due to the pandemic, for both education and health and social-care practice. It is also clear that reforms and adjustments were implemented in guidance, policies and frameworks for the support of persons with learning disabilities and autism. It has been increasingly difficult for people with disabilities to access healthcare services and medication during the pandemic, and this has had an impact on their overall health and wellbeing too. Experts suggested that smoother changes and more support are required, in terms of provision of services, research, access to healthcare, educational services, mental health, employment, as well as more public funding on such services for people with learning disabilities and autism.

The main lessons learned were focusing on the use of online resources, digitalisation of services and access to them, but also difficulty of the system to adapt fast to major changes required in order to support people with disabilities.

Successive policy documents concerning older people's health and well‐being have aimed to improve their care, by raising standards and promoting independence. These policies also emphasise the need for research to prevent disability, and reduce admission to hospitals and long‐term care settings. This paper reports an evaluation in progress of a health technology approach designed to achieve these objectives. An ‘expert system’ is described that is intended to improve older people's access to health and social care information, to enable service providers to review the health and social care needs of older people, and to allow planners to assess the needs of whole populations. The paper ends by inviting discussion and responses from readers of this journal.

The purpose of this paper is to explore interprofessional and multidisciplinary working between health and social care practitioners providing services to older people through the prism of how risk is assessed and managed. It proposes that whilst interprofessional and multidisciplinary working is a broad and commonly researched topic, there is a relative paucity of evidence specifically regarding how health and social care practitioners work together across structural, cultural and ideological divides. The study aims to expand the domain of integrated health and social care by including perceptions, understanding and use of the concept of risk by professionals from different disciplines.

This paper is based upon an exploratory study using an interpretivist phenomenological perspective, including 23 semi-structured individual interviews with health and social care practitioners and 2 non-participant observations of multidisciplinary team meetings.

The paper provides empirical insights around the complex dynamics of interprofessional and multidisciplinary working between health and social care practitioners, in particular the saliency of the interconnectedness of individual practitioner Personalities with the Process of interprofessional and multidisciplinary working under the auspices of relevant Policy drivers.

The research was conducted in Wales and, due to the increasingly divergent policy context within the UK, the research results may lack generalisability from a wider UK or international perspective. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the propositions of this research further.

The paper includes implications for both interprofessional and multidisciplinary policy and practice with older people. With new models of integrated care being sought, the findings of this study may offer a timely and valuable contribution, particularly from the inclusion of a social care perspective and in better understanding the interconnectedness of practitioner personalities with process and policy.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study the complex dynamics and interconnectedness between health and social care practitioners who work together to provide services to older people.

Integration is a watchword in Government policy, designed to give more seamless, and therefore more effective, services to people in need. One concern, though, is that this is merely a ‘structural’ approach that just rearranges the deckchairs. This paper gives a practical example of a positive, local leadership approach to integration within a national context.

Social care is likely to be a key campaign issue in the 2010 general election. An overview of the current policy positions of the major political parties suggests a consensus in many areas, notably personalisation, the third sector, reducing bureaucracy, and closer working between health and social care. Differences may be sharper in policy detail and how future funding should be reformed. Irrespective of who wins the election, the forthcoming spending squeeze will focus attention on how to achieve more with fewer resources, and health and social care integration is likely to become a higher policy priority.

In this chapter, I develop an analysis of the institutional logics which have shaped the organizational field of public sector mental health and which provide a framework for understanding the complexities facing policy makers, providers, researchers, and community mental health advocates.

I first assess the current state of public sector mental health care. I then describe institutional theory, which focuses our attention on the wider social values and priorities (i.e., institutional logics) which shape mental health care. In the current post-deinstitutionalization era, there are three competing institutional logics: recovery and community integration, cost containment and commodification, and increased social control over those with severe mental disorders. Each of these logics, and the conflict between them, is explicated and analyzed. I then develop a theoretical framework for understanding how conflicting institutional logics are resolved. In the concluding section of this chapter, I offer some guidance to both researchers and advocates seeking meaningful system level reform.

Researchers studying mental health policy need to understand how competing institutional logics work to shape the political climate, economic priorities, and types of services available.

Advocacy is critical for meaningful reform, and a fourth institutional logic – that of social justice – needs to be developed by which to evaluate policy reforms and service offerings.

This paper theoretically and empirically analyzes the effects of the elderly’s physical health status on their need for care and the choice of care models in China.

Empirically, the estimation results of a large-sample randomized intervention trial with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients through the difference-in-difference method indicated the following: (1) After the COPD intervention trial, the physical health status of the elderly in the treatment group improved significantly, the need for care was substantially reduced and the health improvement led to a 35.5% reduction in the probability of using elderly care. (2) The reduction in the need for care regarding the treatment group occurred mainly in social care. The probability of using social care decreased by 67.8% due to the elderly’s health improvement, while that of home care remained unchanged generally. (3) Further heterogeneity tests suggested that families with fewer potential internal resources for caregiving had a more pronounced decline in the need for social care.

Theoretically, these empirical results support the existence of the “pecking order” theory in the family’s choice of elderly care model, that is, families tend to employ all internal resources for caregiving before resorting to social care, resulting in a higher sensitivity of social care to health.

The main policy implication of this paper is that ex ante preventive health intervention policies can significantly alleviate the burden of care, especially social care, on families. And preventive health intervention policies are particularly effective in reducing the burden of the families with relatively few resources for informal internal care.

The challenges facing today's Mexican migrant population, almost a third of the US migrant population, are formidable. Such high representation offers not only challenges, but also increased political representation and large networks of social support. Complex relationships established through such networks provide Mexican migrants with avenues of access to communities, opportunities and services. Following a working definition of community and the concept of social capital, this paper examines health care availability for Mexican migrants in the United States. Because Mexican women are traditionally responsible for the health of their families, a case study is used to illustrate how knowledge and information gained through women's social networks gives Mexican women in the US critical decision‐making power with regard to health care. Greater acknowledgement of women as the brokers of health‐preserving information networks is key to recognising their significance as stakeholders in community health care. Future policy developers should recognise the importance of understanding such specific contextual issues, because they create a health care system that is responsive to individual and community needs.

Older people (particularly 75 years+) are the main users of health and social care services. They are also the age group most likely to occupy non‐decent homes. Government health and social care policy is increasingly focused on enabling more older people to remain living independently in their own homes and on delivery of care ‘at or closer to home’. This article considers how greater recognition of the negative impacts of poor‐quality and inappropriate housing on older people's health and well‐being, combined with targeted housing repair and adaptation assistance, could contribute to achieving a range of current health and social care objectives, including enabling older people to live independently in mainstream housing and better management of chronic health conditions.

The purpose of this study was to systematically review literature to investigate trends in compassionate release policies, facility implementation, barriers at both the incarcerated individual and institutional levels, as well as gaps in the literature. The absence of uniform and appropriate policies to address suitable interventions at the end-of-life has aggravated the challenges and issues facing health-care systems within a correctional facility. A response to address and alleviate these barriers is policies related to compassionate release, a complex route that grants eligible inmates the opportunity to die in their community. Despite the existence of compassionate release policies, only 4% of requests to the Federal Bureau of Prisons are granted, with evidence demonstrating similarly low rates among numerous state prison systems, signifying the underuse of these procedures as a vital approach to decarceration.

A systematic review was completed using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines. Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International Abstracts, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Cochrane Library, Education Resources Information Center, Google Scholar, MEDLINE, PsycINFO, PubMed, Social Services Abstracts and Social Work Abstracts were searched from inception to March 2021. Inclusion criteria included: the compassionate release policy (or related policy) is implemented in the USA; reported qualitative and/or quantitative outcomes; and reported original data.

Twenty studies formed the final data set. Data analysis revealed four main themes: language barriers, complexities of eligibility criteria, over-reliance on prognostication and social stigma. Barriers to inmates’ access to compassionate release policies include unclear or technical language used in policy documents. Eligibility criteria appear to vary across the country, including disease prognoses and the ability to predict terminal declines in health, creating confusion amongst inmates, lawyers and review boards. Stigmas surrounding the rights of incarcerated individuals frequently influence policymakers who experience pressure to maintain a punitive stance to appease constituents, thus discouraging policies and interventions that promote the release of incarcerated individuals.

Further research is vital to strengthen the understanding of compassionate release policies and related barriers associated with accessing various types of early parole. To promote social justice for this marginalized population, end-of-life interventions in corrections need to be consistently evaluated with outcomes that improve care for dying inmates.

Within correctional facilities, correctional health-care workers should play an integral role in influencing prison and medical staff attitudes toward dying inmates by providing an understanding of how to effectively support this vulnerable population. Social workers should participate in research that focuses on effective guidelines for correctional facilities to provide compassionate end-of-life care for inmates.

Racial disparities in the US criminal justice system are prevalent and well documented, as individuals of color are arrested far out of proportion to their share of all individuals in the USA. This particular population is thus challenged with poor access to and quality of health care in corrections. Correctional health-care workers can play an integral role in influencing policymakers, as well as prison and medical staff attitudes toward dying inmates by providing an understanding of how to effectively support this vulnerable population.

Currently, there are no published research articles that provide a systematic review of compassionate release policies in the USA.