Martin Bulmer - The Social Basis of Community Care (Routledge Revivals)

The Social Basis of Community Care

Care for the elderly, disabled and mentally-ill within and by the community forms a vital part of current social policy. Martin Bulmer argues that this policy is inadequately thought out and rests on a series of poorly founded sociological assumptions. As a result there is a vacuum at the heart of governments social care policy which is likely to lead to ineffective or deteriorating provision for those in need.

This book, first published in 1987, will be essential reading for all those concerned with the organization and delivery of social care, whether as students, practitioners or teachers. It will be particularly useful for courses dealing with social policy, the personal social services and the social context of social work.

The Social Basis of
Community Care

Martin Bulmer

First published in 1987
by Allen & Unwin Ltd

This edition first published in 2015 by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

1987 Martin Bulmer

The right of Martin Bulmer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Publishers Note

The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original copies may be apparent.

Disclaimer

The publisher has made every effort to trace copyright holders and welcomes correspondence from those they have been unable to contact.

A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 87000988

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-90335-7 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-69696-6 (ebk)

The
Social Basis
of
Community Care

MARTIN BULMER

Martin Bulmer, 1987
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No reproduction without permission. All rights reserved.

Allen & Unwin, the academic imprint of
Unwin Hyman Ltd
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Allen & Unwin (New Zealand) Ltd in association with the Port
Nicholson Press Ltd,

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First published in 1987

Typeset in 10 on 12 pt Bembo by Computerised Typesetting Services and printed in Great Britain by Billings & Sons, London and Worcester

This book is about the relationship between ideas and policy. The policy with which it is concerned is known as community care, the support by informal and formal carers of the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, the mentally handicapped and other dependent groups in the community, who are usually in their own homes, rather than in institutions. The ideas with which this work deals are a mixture of sociological propositions about the nature of modern community life, including personal ties between, in particular, relatives, friends and neighbours, and bowdlerized versions of these ideas which have found their way into the discourse of policy-makers. A central purpose in writing the book is to suggest that, in significant respects, community care policies rest upon fallacious common-sense assumptions which are wrongly presented by policy-makers as sociological truths. As a result there is a vacuum at the heart of care policy which is likely to lead to ineffective or deteriorating provision of services, to the extent that care is transferred to the community. Everyone interested in community care, whether as student, practitioner or citizen, needs to be aware that this vacuum is being created.

As a policy, community care is of relatively recent origin. Its history is traced in outline in centres and by nursing staff on the one hand and by members of their own families on the other.

Community care also refers, importantly, to policies aiming to avoid the institutionalization of other dependent groups in the population. In Britain, 95 per cent of the elderly still live in their own homes, and the more frail and immobile (particularly concentrated among the over 75s) are enabled to do so by a mixture of personal care by kin, neighbours and friends and statutory care by district nurses, home helps, social workers, G.P.s and various organized activities such as meals-on-wheels and day centres. Voluntary provision is also an important resource through formal organizations such as Womens Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS) and Help the Aged, and via more informally run neighbourhood care groups. To some extent community care policy merely recognized more explicitly the nature and range of existing provision. Informal care has a pedigree as long as human history. The salience of community care in the 1960s and 1970s stemmed in part from the rapid growth of the personal social services and the perceived need to clarify the boundary between formal and informal provision. There were also, however, moves to plan for it more explicitly, starting with the Seebohm Report on the organization of the personal social services in the late 1960s, and more recently centre-stage in the Barclay Report of 1982 on the roles and tasks of social workers, which recommended a new place for social workers as social care planners integrating formal and informal care. More recently the Audit Commission (1986) has cast a critical eye over the whole field.

One important theme of recent policy discussion has been the need to link formal with informal care in the community, often using the metaphor of interweaving. During the 1980s this has been associated in central government thinking with an enhanced role for the voluntary and private sectors of care (the latter mainly institutional) and with reductions in expenditure on statutory personal social services. Indeed, in September 1984 the Secretary of State for Social Services envisaged a changing role for local authority social service departments as co-ordinators of care provided by voluntary, private and informal carers as well as local government. There have been difficulties in providing flesh for the bones of this new conception, but the fact that it was proposed was indicative of the importance which community care had assumed.