Getting the right care and support is hard enough without people using language you don’t understand. Imagine being told that you need ‘assessment and care planning’. You might initially be filled with dread at the thought of jargon that sounds so complex, but it needn’t be daunting. An assessment is a conversation about people’s needs, how this can affect people’s wellbeing and what people want to be able to do in their daily life. A care and support plan should say how these needs will be met and what your personal requirements are.
A the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), along with our friends at the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE), we have written a new quick guide on assessment and care planning. A lot of our quick guides are for professionals. This one is aimed at people who use services and carers.
What can you do?
We firmly believe that people who use social care services should be treated as individuals. Their care and support should be based on what they can already do, what they want to achieve and the help they need to live their lives in the way they want to. This guide will help people to understand just what they should expect from social care staff during assessment and care planning. And it covers such issues as making decisions, getting support from an advocate, needs assessment and care planning.
This is important because people should be treated as individuals, and their care and support should be based on what they can already do, what they want to achieve and the help they need. We make a case for social care staff involving users in making decisions and respecting those decisions. Care plans need to be flexible, just in case needs and wishes change; and they should be reviewed regularly. And they should take into consideration how any needs are linked to gender, sexuality, disability, ethnicity or religion; and how these will be met.
We’re proud of the new quick guide because we hope that people can really see the value of it; making their social care experience a better one. There’s an interactive version of the report or you can download a pdf version. Also, if you want to continue challenging that secretive language that’s used to describe straightforward care processes, do look at Think Local Act Personal’s Jargon Buster.