… And they’re off! But it’s a disappointing start for the Mental Capacity Act

In the line-up for the 2007 legislation Grand National we see the return of some old favourites.  Waiting for the starters’ orders are the Mental Health Act alongside the NHS & Community Care Act. We also see the return of the Chronically Sick & Disabled Persons Act and … surely not … Yes it is, the National Assistance Act is back for another plod around the course, surely he should have retired by now.  We also welcome along one of the favourites this year, in his first year of entry, the Mental Capacity Act is confidently waiting for what must surely be a resounding victory for all those he represents.   They’re under starters’ orders, and they’re off …

… but it’s a rather lack-lustre performance from the Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA).  I’m probably not the only one slightly disappointed by the sluggish start; 5 years into the MCA I have to admit that things probably haven’t gone as some of us may have imagined.  I was prompted to write this blog having recalled a recent occasion concerning a gentleman with a learning disability. He asked his carers for support to obtain an application form for a driver’s license and then to complete the form. Instantly, the carers decided that it would be far too dangerous for the gentleman to be driving around and, quoting the MCA, in his ‘best interest’ decided that it would be better if they didn’t support the gentleman to obtain and complete a driver’s license application form. I think the only correct consideration of the MCA were the two words, ‘best interest’ and even they were out of context! On every level, they failed to apply the MCA correctly or even remotely well. If  they had, they would have approached the decision from the assumption that the gentleman had capacity (which, interestingly he did) and provided the support he was requesting in the first place.

This of course isn’t an isolated incident and only recently was also reported about on the Community Care website.  Poor application of the MCA is widespread, it crosses all levels of care professions and it has to be addressed for the sake of those it should be protecting. If I were the MCA, I would be suffering from a complex right about now. Being misrepresented, misquoted, ignored, it’s enough to make even the strongest legislation question themselves!

Some organisations see the importance of MCA training, but where I often see a glaring hole is in people’s ability to apply the principles and use the MCA as the framework it was intended to be. People can usually quote phrases, provide general themes or even list the 5 principles of the MCA but that is often where knowledge and application stop. Carers and professionals alike should be discussing it daily, in team meetings, formally in supervision and informally. They should be applying it to all decisions being made and actions being undertaken on behalf of someone who may lack capacity. They should be questioning everything and inquisitively discussing whether any action or decision being made is the least restrictive or whether a seemingly unimportant decision made by carers or professionals has just had a significant impact upon individual.

The MCA doesn’t have to be a complex piece of legislation unattainable to anyone who doesn’t have a law degree.  It even comes with a very user-friendly Code of Practice to which of course, anyone working with an individual who may lack capacity must have regard for.  But it does have to be a piece of legislation that is used well and frequently by all concerned to ensure that we really do act in peoples’ best interest.

Familiarity Breeds Contempt

Over the course of the past months, who could help but feel a plethora of emotion as the horrors of Winterbourne View have unfolded before our very eyes: Absolute disgust that an organisation could get to the point where such blatant institutional abuse becomes a part of daily life, anger at the systems in which we work as they are revealed as insufficient to protect the most vulnerable in our society or perhaps a heart-wrenching empathy towards the vulnerable and a passion that things have to change and something done… but what?

It will hopefully have challenged us all as a professionals.  Is it just possible that as we go about our business there is a very real danger of becoming complecent unless we keep on out toes and remain true to our professional standards and ethical practices?  I’ve been reminded how very important the role of those who commission services and the need for greater accountability when choosing services for individuals who can’t choose for themselves.   Are we pressured into choosing the cheaper option even when we know in our heart that it isn’t the most suitable?  Do we sigh a sigh of relief and accept without question when we find a service that will accommodate the individual with particularly challenging behaviour knowing that the option will be limited? Do unrealistic case-load sizes prevent us from spending time to think outside of the box and identify the very best service and then think how it might be achieved? Do we have a professional relationship with providers when a less formal relationship can be so much easier? If we become too familiar those so important boundaries can become distorted and increase the risk of poor practice or even abuse going unnoticed or being excused.

I started my social care career working in a residential home for children with autism and it must be said that in my experience the majority of carers are decent caring people who go the extra mile.  Most don’t get paid heaps, have to work shifts but still turn up at work asking how they can make the next 8 hours the best they possibly can for those they have come to work for.  However, there are some for whom that isn’t the case and over the past couple of weeks we have seen 11 photos that will probably remain imprinted on our minds long after the media frenzy has died down.

I’d really like to hear how recent events have perhaps challenged you as a health or social care worker as you strive to help deliver the very best services to those who need them. I also look forwards to hearing how the Department of Health is going to drive service commissioning, delivery and safeguarding forwards.  What is agreed upon is that there needs to be a radical overhaul of social care; what doesn’t see so clear is what that will look like.

 

A Culture of Care?

I can’t help it but I’m somewhat unimpressed and uninspired by claims that Castlebeck’s transformation is nearly complete (As reported by The Guardian).  I’m sure Mr Sullivan has done a sterling job in dragging the remains of homes such as Winterbourne View towards acceptable standards but the very fact that such poor standards of care are evident in contemporary care is a shameful indictment on our society.

It riles me not only that such abuse took place in the first instance, but that it wasn’t picked up by the care provider.  Would the abuse still be happening if it were down to Castlebeck to identify it and take action?  I shudder to think that the answer might be a resounding “Yes”.  Also to think what else may be happening within care homes across the UK where vulnerable adults don’t have the benefit of family involvement or carers with the insight to blow the whistle on abuse … or Panorama!

 Having worked with numerous residential and nursing homes, it is not hard to see how totally dependant some vulnerable members of our society are on those paid to provide good quality care:  Care that is monitored and regulated and where safeguarding policies are in place to ensure that those who can’t speak up for themselves are protected from abuse… Really?

I can’t help but recalling one particular home, the manager was sitting in a very well equipped, spacious office when I arrived congratulating herself at the marvel that were her new, glossy brochures. Showing prospective families just exactly how decent the home was with its ample garden blooming with flowers and general good cheer.  Carers smiled on the front cover in a manner that exuded quality, person-centred care from more carers than one could possibly need whilst care-free residents tucked into their gormet meals.

Sadly, the reality was very different:  Insufficiently trained carers that didn’t have the time to answer a call-bell that had been rung for the umpteenth time as the room’s occupant continued to lie in urine soaked sheets.  Then there was the missed opportunity after missed opportunity to spot pressure wounds that were silently getting progressively worse – out of sight, out of mind.  All the time, the owner continued to congratulate herself and confidently sell the homes’ services to prospective new residents and their families.  Oblivious to the reality that was unravelling the other side of her plush office door.

Of course, such business’ need to be well run but when business comes before quality of care something needs to change.  Whole cultures need to change because if the underlying ethos of a home’s manager is developing a thriving business, how can the ethos of carers within that home be anything different … such as caring perhaps.  Whilst I’m all for serious case reviews and learning from past mistakes, I’m not convinced my ministers’ exclamations that, “We must learn from this so that these things must never happen again!”   I fear that they will happen again … and again until the whole culture of care changes to one of … well, care.

I can recall perhaps just a handful of small care homes where the managers rota themselves on shift so they know what’s going on and can identify any training needs.  Where more money is spent on care than on prtraying a good image to prospective new residents.  They may not be glistening with a new coat of paint every 6 months or benefit from TV advertising but they are run with an underlying ethos of care and respect and reflect far more the brochures that are displayed elsewhere, but they don’t have their own glossy brochures.  All they have is a good reputation which gets them by more than adequately.

Is Social Work necessary in Assessments?

Hot on the heels of a story which extols the virtues of a ‘new’ social enterprise set up by social workers in Lambeth, comes a report from the Audit Commission, published yesterday, which urges councils to reduce spending on qualified social workers in order to save money on assessments in adult social care.

In some ways, it’s very easy to see these two apparently separate news items discretely but it’s also too tempting to run them together to see a pattern of where adult social work is heading.

Audit Commission Report

I briefly read through the Audit Commission report this morning – it is intended for ‘managers and senior managers in adult social care’ and the scope is to look at how local authorities can save money through the assessment processes in this sector in order to have more money to spend on care services.

Interestingly, it pulls out the ‘personalisation’ card in terms of identifying the different ways that assessments are being conducted (more self-assessments – for example) – and that’s true but I hope I would have always put the individual at the centre of every assessment I did – even before ‘personalisation’.

An assessment is a key to eligibility in adult social care and with self-assessments being introduced, it is basically allowing people to self-exclude earlier in the process without having as much professional involvement – which actually, isn’t a problem for those who are below the criteria but what the report misses is how much the process of assessment by a skilled person (whether qualified or not) can scratch the surface of the forms that are completed – particularly when the forms are tailored towards people with physical disabilities and physical health problems – and uncover needs that would meet the eligibility criteria.

The report pushes the somewhat dangerous opinion (in my view) that delivering personalised services will necessarily create lower costs. That’s a stumbling block which has led to poor implementation in my view. I actually don’t have any problem with support planning/brokerage and assessment being pushed to different organisations – but it still has to be done well. It’s interesting that while the Topaz team in Lambeth are looking at working with people who fall below the eligibility criteria, local authorities are looking at people who are eligible having more support from less qualified people – to save money. Lets not forget that’s what it’s about.

But I don’t want to get too fixated on the qualified/unqualified dichotomy because qualified doesn’t always mean better. But it doesn’t mean worse, either.

A paragraph in the report refers to savings being made in ‘back office’ roles – well, honestly, there is a greater need for administration and ‘bureaucracy’ in personalised care packages because we want to be able to offer people different options to manage their own care – either direct payments, individual service funds, trust funds or managed budgets. Of course we don’t have all those options available for all (yet) but imagining that costs can be cut by reducing ‘back office’ roles is honestly, facile. Cuts to ‘back office’ roles has and does put much more pressure on ‘frontline’ jobs. False economies in the extreme.

The report talks about improving online information and.. oh.. leaflets to provide information and to (they hope) deter people from requesting an assessment in the first place. I can see that being useful – and I’m glad they didn’t get ‘online overboard’ and some of the sites produced by local authorities to signpost people are appalling so it’s good advice, it’s just sad to think a report has to be compiled to give that advice. It is a bit depressing that call centres are seen as a solution in any part of social care though particularly when the role of the call centre is to ‘reduce the need for formal assessments’ – in other words it is to filter people out of the system at an earlier stage – so much for preventative work.

The headline of the report though – is that it recommends ‘changing’ the skill mix in adult social care to ‘reflect’ personalisation by shifting from social workers to social work assistants and that’s where some of my main concerns and thoughts lie.

Does a ‘professional’ need to Assess?

Having worked in adult social care teams, I know that there are some awful qualified members of staff and some fantastic non-qualified members of staff. Experience levels vary and I don’t have a problem with a mix of staff. I have no problem with some assessments moving away to third sector organisations and user-led organisations in particular (I will not give a wholehearted ‘bye’ to social enterprises though as I believe ‘social enterprise’ is a VERY broad term that can have a lot of different meanings). Some assessments are basic, many assessments are best completed without the need of any input but some, and this is the key, really do need expert input. Sometimes it’s the conversation that arises in an assessment (which, by the way, is not merely a ‘form-filling’ process) that can lead to further information being garnered. The more lax the assessment process, the more likely that opportunities to provide ‘early intervention’ or identify harder to define needs may be lost.

I mentioned above that all the assessment processes I’ve seen from adult social care are very biased towards physical health needs – it can take a more skilled assessment to draw out mental health needs or more complex family dynamics between the person being assessed and their families. I worry that bypassing the importance of assessment and the skill needed, we may lose carers’ needs which need to be identified much earlier.

So while I don’t think a ‘professional’ needs to assess in every case, what is very important (and missing from the Audit Commission report’) is an appreciation of the importance that professional training, experience, understanding and working with social work theories relating to assessments and an understanding of current research and a commitment to reflection and sensitive communication is and can be to assessments and safeguarding process.

What is social work?

In many ways, this is the key question for adult services and one that has been asked for years – since the move to the ‘care management’ models after the NHS and Community Care Act (1990) was enacted and it became clear that care management was not a social work exclusive role.

The question is more easily answered, I think, in children services and in mental health services where the social work roles are, I think, better defined. Perhaps the separation and specialisation into different ‘fields’ has damaged adult social work more than the others as it has become harder to define.

In adult social work there’s a need for a much stronger professional voice to explain and expound the importance that social work training has in delivering effective outcomes all round. Assessment is a skill and skills can be trained but it need to be linked with knowledge, understanding and reflection to create a picture in more complex (and sometimes the step between simple and complex can be one question, one statement, one gesture) situations.

As a society we undervalue the social work training and role at our cost but increasingly, I can see the role for social work being pushed back to safeguarding functions and ‘complex’ work – that’s easily said and I’m sure it appeals to the Audit Commission but it’s important for us, our professional bodies such as the College and Adult Social Care departments and academics to push that we often find the ‘safeguarding’ and ‘complex’ work by doing some of the things that could be done by ‘someone else’.

Where next

Community Care has responses from BASW and the College which say similar things. I think it’s important that as social workers in adult services, we also prove our own worth internally. We talk about research we have read in team meetings, in our supervision, we explain why we did what we did in terms of the theories we know and use. We talk professionally, we respond professionally and we become what we want our profession to be.

We need to all take responsibility to prove our own worth.

picture by KatherineKenny at Flickr

The Human Cost of Cuts in Social Care

Yesterday I was sent a link to this blogpost by Lucy at The Small Places. I highly recommend everyone involved in social care read this post. It is written by someone who uses and needs support that is provided by the local authority, however their services have been, are being cut significantly.

The narrowing of the eligibility criteria isn’t a ‘paper cut’ made in an office within accounting departments of local authorities, it has a harsh and detrimental effect on the day to day quality of life of another human being who is dependent on the way that provisions are allocated. These are the choices that have been and are being made in the context of cuts and these are the people, actually, we are all the people that Burstow has to justify himself to when he talks about no money being taken out of social care budgets.

The author of the blogpost explains

Yesterday, my care plan was reviewed, and despite the social worker agreeing that I have substantial ‘needs’, to every question that I answered regarding what my carers do for me, the reply was: ‘we don’t fund that any more’. So from now on, no one is allowed to do: laundry, from putting into the washer, putting on a ceiling clothes rail, ironing and putting away…

no shopping allowed or putting it away; paying bills or doing any post office visits; carers aren’t allowed to accompany you out any more either socially, or to hospital/doctors/dentist/opticians or other practical appointments where you need someone to propel your wheelchair; they can’t put the bins out; can’t stack or empty the dishwasher or do any kind of clearing up whatsoever: the list goes on and on. All of the things that I cannot do for myself.Just about anything you can think of that a healthy person would do in the home or outside the home on a day-to-day/week-to-week basis is no longer allowed.

I recognise this. From the ‘other side’ so to speak. I have been, I am, that social worker (well, not in literal terms) but I have to explain that we no longer provide hot meals delivery, we can’t count time for someone to be taken to medical appointments, we deprive people of assistance for some of the tasks we, ourselves, take for granted.

There has always been an issue of resourcing with some user groups benefiting more than others. In older adults services, for example, it was always rare to allow carers time to accompany service users to go to the shops – however, wasn’t the new and wonderful era of personalisation and choice supposed to change this?

We are now able to offer the choice between the hours (and money) spent on someone helping with a bath and use it instead to go out for an hour to the shops. Not necessarily a palatable choice we would expect for ourselves, is it?

The author of the post goes on

I am supposed to have everything delivered now, but they don’t understand the costs of that. Fresh food (and I say that in the loosest sense since they mostly send you stuff that’s about to go out of date), in terms of fruit for example does not last a whole week; you’re lucky if it’s a few days. I can’t eat processed food because I also have IBS. So I’ll have to do an internet shop twice a week which will cost £8 delivery and I will also have to spend a minimum of £25 per shop, that means my four weekly food bill would be £240: I cannot possibly afford that. And since no one is allowed to put it away, what do I do with it when it arrives?

Cost transfers from local authority to user and is the ‘personal budget’ supposed to allow for this? You’d think so.  This was one of the more baffling parts of the post

Ah, now the very helpful social worker had a suggestion for all of this: I can use my D.L.A. to employ someone to do all of the other things now and pay for any transport needs! That’s what D.L.A. is for isn’t it? As I replied however, I pay ALL of the care element and part of my severe disability element back to the local authority for my care, so how can I use that?

Well, exactly. Disability Living Allowance (or Attendance Allowance for over 65s) is non-means tested however it is counted in terms of assessments for charges so there is an expectation in the finance departments within Local Authorities.  This allowance is seen by the local authority as a legitimate  target for charges to be recouped back to the Local Authority for the costs of care – and to be honest, I can see the point. These benefits (at least, the care component) are paid because there are care needs specifically. However for the social worker to lack this information is no doubt rubbing salt into the wound of cuts.  The social worker sounds to have been put in a difficult position and I know the feeling. We are tasked to pass the news of cuts to those who can least afford it and who rely most heavily on the provision of services – but it’s a duty to give fair and honest advice at this point.

It does make it clear though that ‘better information’ and shiny web sites providing directories of services or new ‘Trip Advisor’ type sites rating services are all very well and good but the real thing that social care needs is funds to meet basic needs. The focus needs to be on quality of life not ‘how much can we slice off budgets’. There no easy answer but being disingenuous about the nature of ‘choice’ available and being honest about the realities of decisions being made is significant.

This post speaks the truth of many others who cannot speak up – and this is someone who has been able to use a direct payment positively. There are many many more who haven’t.

As a social worker this post spoke the realities I see every day and highlights the benefits of social media to improve my personal practice – it shows me how social workers are perceived with an honesty I rarely get in terms of feedback on a day to day basis due to the power differentials which exist.  I hope I don’t respond to people in the way that social worker did but I will be more aware of my responses and how they are interpreted when I am in people’s homes.

And I will continue to fight against the cuts agenda all the harder. We have a powerful collective voice as social workers and we have to use it to tell the stories that we say, to not passively accept some of the hardships and injustices we see on a daily basis.

We can and must do so much better.

A look at ‘Caring for our future : reforming care and support’

A rapid chase through the Care White Paper

The government published it’s long overdue Care White Paper yesterday. There’s been time for a significant amount of coverage to push through to the media and I don’t want to repeat information that’s out there but rather provide a response/analysis from where I am and where I see it. There is a good summary on Community Care though.

It’s a hotch potch of a document. The words are pretty but there’s an underlying tone of ‘saving taxpayers money’ which shines through from every good intentioned statement. Saving money isn’t a bad thing but I wonder how much the intention is to change the way the market in care is delivered in line with the NHS Bill and how much is to actually change the philosophy behind the process of care. I doubt the government’s good intentions.

The White Paper divides into eight chapters. So I’ll follow that pattern in my review of them.

Chap 1: The Case for Change

Here, the paper itself sets out the current difficulties in the system as it is at present which is reactive to crisis rather than focused on prevention. I can’t help feeling a little cynical in noting even the current system wasn’t intended to be this way, but has developed as such due to the pressures on funding.  The government line is to prove the point about crisis response but that’s not really been the agenda all the time.

Believe it or not, there was a time we met ‘low’ needs and while accepting there is a financial limit, the demonisation of the system is hardly a true reflection of what was envisaged and more should be learnt about the ways that systems imposed develop into a ‘race to the bottom’.

So the paper suggests that the answers will be found by providing more services sooner in the process of ageing or a disabling condition.  We will have more support for carers and will be promoting communities to provide support within themselves.

People need more information, without doubt, and that will be provided. That’s hardly revolutionary but too much has been down to local differences – the old ‘postcode lottery’ arguments. This will be clarified so people can move around the country and know what they will be able to expect.

Interesting that the ‘opportunities from reform’ all seem to revolve around financial benefits. It’s a valid benefit and opportunity but an interesting angle so

‘Promoting people’s wellbeing and independence’ will ‘limit future demand for care and support and help to ensure taxpayers’ money is used for effectively’.

Support for carers will enable them to ‘remain in the workplace’ which will ‘support economic growth’. So THAT’S why they are so keen to support carers – don’t want anyone to think that ‘caring’ without pay for a family member isn’t a valid and essential economic contributor.

and ‘Supporting businesses to grow’ – which is maybe what choice is all about.

I’m not against these agendas but I think the framing in economic terms is very very interesting.

Chap 2: Our vision for care and support

Understandably and quite rightly there is a high proportion of ‘control’ wanting to be distributed from top down to users in this section of the White Paper which is all well and good. It’s been (rightly) the movement of travel and needs to go further. As someone who works with people who have not been able to benefit fully from the ‘choice and control’ agenda, I was particularly looking for things that would help and support the people that I work with here.

There’s a lot of focus on promoting communities in being active and enabling to those living in them. There’s a need to promote better information streams – quite rightly – the system is enormously complex and I spot a little line on page 19 about ‘supporting the transformation of the social work profession’.

So the role and place of the local authority to provide care and support will be changing as it says

‘instead of purchasing and providing care and support, authorities will increasingly be expected to take a leadership role in a local area’. That should be interesting.

Chap 3 ‘I am supported to maintain my independence for as long as possible”

So in looking at prevention of isolation and needs the White Paper turns to communities to look for support, quite rightly. There’s a lot of potential here and social isolation is specifically targeted with some wonderful local models explained in terms of the way they work with isolated people to bring them into communities.

Not everyone wants to be a part of a community and there are some people communities tend to be less eager to support but it’s a great initiative for some people and there will be a lovely new Outcome Framework which will identify measures of loneliness for us to work on while local authorities managers and accountants look at ways they can meet targets at low or no cost.

Commissioners will be ‘encouraged’ (whatever that means) to draw on community support networks rather than moving people into ‘formal’ services. I read that along the lines of finding services that are provided at low or no cost but perhaps I’m a cynic.

There’s a line here too about social work pilot schemes which will  ‘liberate’ (I’m VERY suspicious of the word ‘liberate’) social workers from case management. It looks like a push towards more community based social work but I have some concerns. Firstly, case management is only bad if it is implemented badly as a process rather than as a collaboration. Poor case management can have an enormously detrimental effect on someone.

I’m not convinced by social work pilots but will wait for the outcomes of these pilots to see before I make a final judgement. I like the idea of more community work but am worried at what cost it may come in terms of privatising delivery of service and moving responsibilities for provision away from a democratic mandate.

I do like the idea of connecting care homes with their local areas. That is enormously positive and where I’ve seen it happen locally, it has made a big difference. It does seem like a lot of ‘use volunteers’ as the answer to problems but honestly, that’s not a bad thing where there are volunteers. I just wonder if all communities will be as engaged and where there is such a great reliance on community to provide support, what will be done in those areas that aren’t as supportive.

As regards housing, there will be significant investments in housing for older and disabled people. I hope this will encompass people in mental health services and is not limited to those with physical  health needs. There is a muddle over extra-care sheltered accommodation which is described as a way to meet low level needs but also as an alternative to residential care. Oh, I mean a ‘cost effective’ alternative to residential care. Missed the key point there.

Chap 4 ‘I understand how care and support works and what my entitlements and responsibilities are’

Information, information, information. It’s crucial in order to make choices and the government sets out ways, particularly websites, that will provide more information about services and facilities to all rather than just those eligible for them.

Interestingly the NHS 111 number will roll out support for social care. I wonder how this will work as a national helpline when provisioning is so different locally and there will be an extension of services like NHS Direct and NHS Choices into the social care sphere. Look forward to seeing that. I genuinely hope it works.

Local authorities will also be obliged to provide more information online but also in other formats, to those looking at services and providers but it looks like there is intended to be a default move online for many access points – including self assessments online as ‘they provide a better customer experience’. I wonder how this marries with the issues around the digital divide. There will be paper and telephone options available at least.

There will be a national eligibility framework and it seems (although this will only be confirmed later) that it may well be set at ‘substantial’ under current FACS guidelines although there will be a move to a new framework of assessment and eligibility.

People will also  have more options about who assesses them.

‘Our ambition is for many more providers to offer assessment services’. Good business opportunities there and a role for the social work pilot schemes.

Carers will have an entitlement to assessment (which exists) and to the provision of services (which doesn’t at present). I’m glad to see that.

Chapter 5 ‘I am happy with the quality of my care and support’

There’s an interesting diagram on this chapter on page 38 with circles of ‘roles and responsibilities in care and support’ around the ‘service users and carers’ at the centre, with Government, Commissioners, Providers and CQC around them. Interesting that there is no place for social workers. I expect we come into ‘commissioners’ but sad that the profession doesn’t seem to have a place around this diagram and is not even mentioned.

There is talk of better regulation by the CQC with inspections annually (scandalous that they were ever anything but in my view).

Looks like they’ll be a return to some kind of rating system too. Strange that just disappeared.

Statutory Safeguarding Adults Boards will be convened by local authorities with police and NHS organisations inputting to them. There will be further consultation on powers to access someone who might be at risk of abuse or neglect.  Personally, I’d like to have seen more on safeguarding.

Commissioning on quality is emphasised (good) and there seems to be a desire to look at some kind of outcome model to judge this. There’s also an acknolwedgement of the failing of some private care homes such as Southern Cross and

‘Local authorities have a duty to provide accommodation to anyone – publicly or self-funded – who has an urgent need for care which is not otherwise available’ and noone will be left homeless if a provider were to fail.

I don’t doubt that would be the case anyway but more public protection for private companies failing can only lead to additional costs.

Chapter 6 ‘I know that the person giving me care and support will treat me with dignity and respect’.

Here there’s an emphasis on building skills in the social care sector. I don’t believe people go into this field of work to be oppressive or uncaring but the system dictates it and a bullying workplace leads to poor and dangerous service delivery to people who have higher needs.

The government claims to be committed to the plans of the Social Work Reform Board and that the College of Social Work will play a heavy role in improving standards of education and training in social work in universities.

The White Paper supports the position of Principal Social Workers in Adult Services and part of that role will be coordinating feedback from frontline practitioners. I look forward to having one locally as I have a lot to feedback.

Chapter 7 ‘I am in control of my care and support’

Ah, personalisation, that bittersweet word which means everything and nothing. Everyone entitled to care and support will have a personal budget – I genuinely thought that was already on track and didn’t think it was anything new. And look

‘We will push further with our ambition to support as many people as possible to enjoy the benefits of a direct payment’.

I hope that support is extensive and looks beyond the current models which have served some exceptionally well but many others very very poorly.

I won’t mention the ignorant way that advocacy is included in the White Paper which evidences a lack of knowledge by those who wrote the paper but will merely reference Martin Coyle’s (from Action for Advocacy) blogpost which says it all.

There’s some more in this section about integration between health and social care which is becoming more distant in practice rather than more evident.  Use of the term ‘care coordination’ is confusing as it is a generally used term in mental health services and has different technical meaning to the way it is used in the White Paper in terms of physical health. That has already caused us many confusing conversations locally as to someone having two care coordinators – one for physical health and one for mental health – which kind of proves the point about duplicating work and having unfathomable systems. The terms should really be clarified and separated if necessary.

Chapter 8 ‘Making it Happen’

A draft bill was published alongside the White Paper. I haven’t read it yet. I wonder that some organisations seem to have thrown their lot in wholeheartedly with the government which makes me a little nervous. I want to support positive change but I don’t want to be blinded by good intentions and words that lead to little that changes the lives of those who have the most need for support.

Interestingly the ‘financial context’ is stuck at the back of the White Paper like a growing tumour. There are mealy mouthed words about the government putting money into social care but while taking away in the other hand, from local government, they have contributed directly to the ‘crisis management’ only model that they criticise.

Conclusion

I see little if anything revolutionary in this paper. I see nothing that explains a change in the direction of travel and means of delivering social care. I see some positive signs and some acknowledgement of difficulties but we were moving down the path of personalisation at a rate that it could only continue. While there was mention of personal budgets for residential care, I saw nothing about ISFs and developing ways of promoting choice for those who are excluded from communities and who may lack capacity. I saw nothing about changing legislative frameworks. I saw a lot of gaps, not least, the massive funding gap.

Nice words though, fluffy and helpful and a lot of the language of ‘choice’ (where possible), ‘community’ (where free) and ‘market’.

These things are always filled with the right words. I think a lot of opportunity to restructure and rethink adult social care has been lost although there are some springs of hope – there aren’t by any means enough.

Pic by wintersoul1 at Flickr

Integration, Conversation and Change

Some Random Thoughts about Making Things Better

I have spent a good deal of the last week thinking about the importance of building and making links across different parts of the ‘whole’ in terms of the way services are provided by agencies to us, the public. Some of the following thoughts may seem random but I’m trying to connect them in my head! Slowly but surely..

Conferences

Last week I attended the Digital Health Conference and Hack in Leeds (which I wrote about here).  Without repeating myself too much, there was a programme around changes and new thinking in both health and social care that stretched over two days and involved a lot of conversations with people from many different areas – both in terms of place of interest and work and in terms of geographical area and level of authority.

The main theme I took from those days was around the important of connections and conversations. Ideas and innovation is not a top down, nor a bottom up flow. The channels and flows need to be horizontal – and across sector and areas of interest – as well as vertical. We need to look at ideas from outside the sector rather than only talk to ourselves and rely on well-meaning civil services to devise policies in London, particularly when ‘social care’ is often seen as an afterthought in the ‘health and social care’ agenda. When I look at models and policies developed for ‘health and social care’ and see that social care is little more than an afterthought with processes developed clearly by people who probably would find it difficult to define social care, let alone understand the messy way it is structured locally, I start to despair and then remember that if I invite myself to the table, I can make those points directly which may, possibly, make a difference.

I left Leeds with some glimmers of hope that as long as social care does continue to place itself around tables like that, we would be able to contribute and even, perhaps, influence thinking in a little way.

‘Health’ is universal, social care is not. The narrowing restrictions on access to funded social care is a massive challenge as access unfortunately can play into the government agenda of stigmatising those who need the provision of service. There isn’t yet a more general perception that social care is something for everyone and in adults services, anyway, the charging policies cause a great deal of anger and resentment when we are trying to offer them to people.

Conversation

I had another conversation earlier this week too, with Mark Brown who is the editor of One in Four (highly recommended, I’ve been a subscriber for a while).  We come from different angles but want to find answers to the same problem of how t0 provide a better service to those who need it. While we haven’t (yet) found the answer, he’s a lot further ahead of me and I highly recommend looking at the keynote speech he recently delivered in Australia about new ways of delivering and providing mental health services.

Change

In the background as well, I heard about the closing of Social Work teaching at the Institute of Psychiatry and the move towards outcome measurements based on clusters and quantifying diagnosis and recovery, I wonder if Mental Health services are moving backwards rather than forwards in terms of promoting and developing different ways of thinking about services and different ways at delivering which move away from ‘medical models’ which have not proved to be useful generally.

Integration

‘Integration’ is only integration if it actually brings people together rather than driving them apart which is what it feels is happening at the moment. The pots of money are split and the silos are created. This currently is in the interests of those who are working across the sector as they have their own fiefdoms of interest and can’t see new ways of developing practice that is based on unquantifiable aims.

So what do we need to challenge and change from within?

The current systems promote wrong thinking in a number of ways.

If we can’t measure progress, progress doesn’t exist.

We are expected to aim towards mediocrity rather than strive for excellence.

There is an emphasis of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ dichotomy of professional and user with little understanding of the user as professional nor of the professional as user.

Thinking of the tenets of personalisation and how the poor implementation has been managed in England, I can see both some rays of hope and some shadows of despair.

What was supposed to be a user focused attempt to shift power in social care services has, instead, imposed an attempt at new ways of thinking onto old models. We were told we had to ‘make things work’ but as we have seen in practice, the tools we were given were old and rusty. Local authorities were not able to shift models of commissioning nor of power structures rapidly enough to make the system a reality. We should be studying and learning from what has gone wrong with this model and pulling up the examples of poor practice to learn rather than constantly dwelling on the models of good practice.

Despite and because of the conversations I’ve had over the past week, I am learning that there isn’t enough different thinking within the systems I work in. The knowledge and desire to change is being paid lip service because there is a demand on time and money. The truth is delivering better is not only potentially further savings in the long run in terms of cash, the amount that can be saved in terms of quality of life improvements are priceless.

Social Work has the possibility to be at the heart of these conversations. We occupy the space around the ‘social’ which strides across health and social care – and across the life course.  However the profession itself doesn’t seem to welcome innovation itself and hasn’t been able to define a specific role which leads to possibilities for much confusion. The way out is for practitioners to develop a voice. Personally, I’m holding out that the College of Social Work will do a better job of it than has happened previously – but the need for innovation and fresh thinking is the only thing that will improve the outcomes for those who rely on us.

We owe it.

Shifts in Support Planning

Community Care alerted me to a new report developed about a great model of support planning  called ‘Empower and Enable’  that is being proposed as a way to invigorate the ‘personalisation’ agenda and move it back to the roots of putting the user at the heart of support planning and removing this from the scope of professionals.

In the process of developing and implementing care currently, after the assessment has been fed through the ‘resource allocation system’ and an indicative budget has been established – the ‘support planning’ comes in to build, yes, you guessed it, a ‘support plan’ which would be what might have been called a ‘care plan’ in the past and details how that support will be delivered for the individual to whom it relates.

Groundswell  Partnership , the ‘personalisation consultancy’  who wrote it, explain that councils should change their models of support planning and move the focus back towards the users of the services provided.

I couldn’t possibly agree more. This is what we were told when the whole personalisation agenda was moved out and I can’t honestly see what’s different apart from the lack of roll out to wider groups than those that  benefited from direct payments. This was the ethos behind rolling  ‘personalisation’ out beyond those who were receiving direct payments previously to everyone in general.

The model presented is one of ensuring that information is more freely available and that ‘professionals’ don’t need to take hold of support planning. It  talks about shedding the ‘belief’ that professional support is necessary to enable support planning. Absolutely right.   I would counter that councils have been trying to move away from professional support for support planning as it is more expensive but are too slow to change and stuck in systems of commissioning and getting services ‘approved’ to have moved quickly enough on this.

Currently, I am deeply concerned that the level of access to support and different kinds of support can be based on the particular social worker or care coordinator allocated in terms of our own knowledge of available services – particularly as regards managed personal budgets. I agree that the way around this is to make as  much information about resources and services open access – including costs and deductions and details of block contracts and how they are delivered,  so that anyone and everyone can have equal knowledge.

I love the idea that support planning should take time but there needs to be some thought to the more immediate support planning that might take place in a crisis situation and looking at how that can feed into these models and look at ways that people can – as far as possible – build in contingencies and forward planning into the current support plans.

The report also talks about building on community capacity to provide support and support planning. Wonderful. Truly wonderful but it fails to tackle those who are excluded by the communities in which they live. Working with a number of people who may lack capacity to manage their own support planning, lack informal support and are isolated or excluded by their community, I often wonder when a realistic report is going to tackle this issue properly – rather than a sentence saying ‘some people may need professional support’.  Maybe it needs it’s own report. I’d love to see that. Honestly. I want to cheer these reports as they flow out of the ‘personalisation consultancies’ and I often do but I need to see some innovative thinking that looks at the realities I face daily.

I would counter that ‘these people’ who lack capacity require independent advocacy on top of professional support. Relying on a social worker for support planning, particularly in work with older adults where the case loads and expectations regarding quantity of work undertaken is particularly high, is absolutely going to  produce a poorer quality support plan. I don’t think anyone is denying that – including the local authority employers – I suspect they would love to tender out this role however the clunky nature of contracting and commissioning makes this slow moving.

I know I put together some poor support plans myself. It doesn’t make me proud. I don’t go to work thinking to myself ‘today I’m doing to produce a poor support plan and I’m not going to ask Mrs Brown or her family about what she actually wants’. I try to consult but the time needed is squeezed. I try to engage family and friends, but you know, believe it or not, some families or friends actually don’t want to be actively involved and some people don’t have family and friends.

These reports are fantastic. We need more. We need more reports to explain why we are doing a poor job about providing support planning.

But what we also need are properly assessed and arranged targets set to local authorities that demand involvement by users in more than a peripheral box ticking way.

We need resources to provide effective and independent advocacy which will allow for equality of access to innovative support planning tools for those who are not able to independently access them for themselves.

My own dream was to break free from the LA yoke and establish some kind of local social enterprise type organisation that would be able to offer dual support planning and non-directed advocacy for those who lack capacity to produce really good support plans and support networks to fill in the gaps for those who don’t have the informal networks or whose family want to support and help but might not be able to to the extent expected sometimes.

If anyone wants to fund me or pay my salary while I do that, please do let me know.

There are better ways. I’m sure of it. While I enjoyed reading the report as it is,  my brain was buzzing about how this model could work with the people I see every day – I’m still waiting for a report to deal with that. And if noone will fund my little social enterprise project, perhaps they could commission me to write report – for myself – about ways it could work better.

But I don’t think I can promise what these reports promise – which is zero cost.

And possibly that’s the key.

KM v Cambridgeshire: the Supreme Court’s decision is not about assessment

“I’m just hoping that after tomorrow the link between value of cash payment and cost of meeting need is not utterly broken!”

…I tweeted yesterday, contributing to a debate about our hopes and expectations for today’s Supreme Court ruling in KM, R (on the application of) v Cambridgeshire County Council 2012] UKSC 23 (31 May 2012). This blog is about that case. I’m pleased to say that my hopes have been fulfilled. But I had set my sights low. I am utterly bemused by some of the other claims being made for this judgement.

Community Care: three key questions

Adult Community Care issues can generally be boiled down to three questions:

• Assessment: deciding what needs should be met
• Funding: deciding who is going to contribute what to the cost
• Delivery: deciding how the needs are going to be met

The KM case was about direct payments, so where do direct payments fall to be considered? Answering that question is key to understanding this judgement. Although direct payments involve the flow of money between local authority and service user, they are not about how the package is funded. And although there are tools to determine how much a direct payment should be, these need have little to do with assessment of eligible need. Direct payments are, pure and simple, one of a number of ways of delivering a service.

What the Supreme Court said about assessment

To be fair, the Supreme Court said a fair bit about how to assess eligible need:

• It set out the legal framework (paragraph 11ff);
• It affirmed that the statutory guidance ‘Prioritising Need in the Context of Putting People First’ gets the framework right (paragraph 16);
• It reaffirmed that once a local authority has determined eligible need, it must meet that need (paragraph 21);
• It decided not to revisit the case of Barry, which held that resources could taken into account during the assessment process (paragraph 43);
• It decided that the assessment of eligible need in KM’s case was not irrational (paragraph 38).

What the Supreme Court did not do is say anything new. It certainly said nothing that would turn a previously ineligible need into an eligible need. And therefore it said nothing that would turn someone who was previously ineligible into someone who is elible.

And therefore I am bemused by the Guardian headline, ‘Court ruling means thousands more disabled people could get access to care‘.

Where the RAS fits in: service delivery

Roughly, local authorities have three possible approaches to delivering the services to meet eligible need. One is to deliver it directly. One is to commission someone else to deliver it. And one is to allow the service user to commission services themselves.

It is here that the RAS fits in. Essentially, the RAS is a tool used in the process of converting eligible need into a cash value, so that the service can be delivered in cash instead of in kind.

Though this is hardly a secret, I am very cynical abut the RAS. Not only is it a tool used to convert eligible need into a cash value, but it is used to obscure the process. In theory, there is a scientific basis. The RAS uses an algorithm. According to that reputable source, Wikipedia,

“Algorithms are essential to the way computers process data. Many computer programs contain algorithms that detail the specific instructions a computer should perform (in a specific order) to carry out a specified task… Thus, an algorithm can be considered to be any sequence of operations that can be simulated by a Turing-complete system.”

Sounds scientific? But according to Luke Clements (2011) ‘A Sideways Look at Personalisation and Tightening Eligibility Criteria’ in Elder Law 1 pp47-52, along the way, “any science in the process is jettisoned in favour of witchcraft.” The computer does the sums, but what the end result has to do with the original assessment of need is anyone’s guess.

Remember, there are two other ways of delivering services. They can be delivered directly, in which case the local authority must have a fairly good idea how the service delivery meets the eligible need. Or the local authority can commission directly, in which case it will also know how much it costs to meet the eligible need.

It is ironically only when the service user is commissioning their own services that the algorithm – or witchcraft – which obscures the link between the eligible need and the cost of meeting it comes into its own.

Back to KM v Cambridgeshire

KM had his needs assessed. He was seeking direct payments to meet those needs. He has considerable disabilities. Cambridgeshire used the RAS, then another algorithm called the Upper Banding Calculator. Then it jiggled about with the figures a little bit more. Ultimately he was offered £85,000 per annum. But he thought he should get £157,000 per year.

That is a big difference. But was the dispute about what his needs were (i.e. the assessment), or was it about what it would cost to meet them (i.e. the service delivery)?

Here’s the simple answer: Cambridgeshire was so effective at obscuring its decision making process that KM couldn’t tell what the dispute was about. The Supreme Court criticizes Cambridgeshire for three things:

• Failing to be open about its assessment of the mother’s contribution to care (paragraph 30);
• Failing to be open about its rejection of the independent social worker’s assessment (paragraph 34); and
• Failing to explain how it arrived at its own sum (paragraph 35)

It would be correct to characterize this case as being ultimately about transparency and not about assessment or resources.

So is the case good news for service users at all?

A brief history of transparency

Having dismissed the notion that thousands will become eligible, having highlighted that the case says nothing new about assessment, having said ultimately it was just about transparency, is it just a storm in a teacup?

No! It is well worth remembering where we were at before:

In Savva, R (on the application of) v Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea [2010] EWHC 414 (Admin) (11 March 2010), the high court upheld the principle of transparency:

“without being able to properly understand the use made of the RAS, the service user and anyone acting on her behalf, is left totally in the dark as to whether the monetary value… is adequate to meet the assessed need… The process of conversion made by the Panel is not explained to the service user. It should have been underpinned by an evidential base, and it was not.”

And as I commented at the time,

“What is being said is that there is a duty to give effect to the rhetoric, and actually demonstrate how the cash payment is adequate to meet assessed need. If the duty to give reasons goes that far, it may help to ensure that the cash payments actually do link to assessed need. Which in turn may undermine the approach of ‘Points mean Prizes’, and defer the day when a computer programme completely replaces the social worker.”

The judgements in KM’s case in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal below were bad news for transparency, and therefore bad news for anyone like me who wants a link between the cost of meeting need and the value of the cash payment. In KM, R (on the application of) v Cambridgeshire County Council [2010] EWHC 3065 (Admin) (26 November 2010), the Court said this:

“[The Claimant] criticises the Defendant for failing to provide an explanation setting out the services required to meet the Claimant’s needs. That appears to me to be a complete misunderstanding of the system of self-directed support. Both the RAS and the Upper Banding Calculator, compared as they were with the assessment and operated using the skill and experience of social workers, were assessment of needs and not services but the RAS was a tool for translating needs into a sum which was adequate to provide the services for those needs by reference to the average costs of the provision by the authority of meeting those needs for other disabled people.”

Upholding this decision last year, in KM, R (on the application of) v Cambridgeshire County Council [2011] EWCA Civ 682 (09 June 2011), the Court of Appeal observed that, “There does not need to be a finite absolute mathematical link” between payment and need.

In short, the history of this case is a history of judicial approval of algorithms and witchcraft, of obfuscation and lack of transparency. The beauty of today’s ruling, the reason I can consider it a victory, is that it reaffirms Savva on the need for transparency. Particularly poignant is the observation in paragraph 36:

“that a local authority’s failure to meet eligible needs may prove to be far less visible in circumstances in which it has provided the service-user with a global sum of money than in those in which it has provided him with services in kind. That point fortifies the need for close scrutiny of the lawfulness of a monetary offer.”

Or to put it another way, it is concerning that it is too easy to use direct payments to obscure potentially unlawful cuts that would be quite obvious if they were delivered or commissioned directly.

The RAS should still go!

The RAS has survived another level of challenge, see paragraph 26. But I still think it should go.

The argument in defence of the RAS in paragraph 24 of the judgement is:

“To set about costing each of the services identified in answer to the question at the [eligible need] stage upon, as it were, a blank sheet of paper would be unacceptably laborious and expensive. So a mechanism has been devised in order to give the exercise a kick-start. It is called a Resource Allocation System (a “RAS”); and many authorities, including Cambridgeshire, have developed one for their own use.”

I am resolutely unconvinced. If we can cost the services to meet the needs on a blank sheet of paper when we need to commission them, then we can cost them on a blank sheet of paper when the service user is going to commission them.

If the RAS is only “the generator of a “ball-park” figure, subject to adjustment up or down” (paragraph 26), then it is a wholly unnecessary extra step rather than a kick start to the calculation.

This is the heart of my concern. Arriving at a cash value of need by generating the starting figure by computer and the final figure by magic is not the most simple way of doing it, it is the most complicated. @TheSmallPlaces has shown in a series of blogs how local authorities actually value the complexity of the process:

• How ‘transparent’ are personal budgets?
• Relaaaaaaax, just have (blind) faith in your RAS
• Hi Ho, Hi Ho, off to the ICO we go… (more on RASs and transparency)

In this, the Supreme Court got it wrong. It was right to approve clear and transparent reasons. It was wrong to approve the RAS as simplifying the process. The RAS is the very antithesis of clear and transparent reasons. In this case, it helped to obscure not only the reason for the sum itself, but also disputes about the assessment. It should go.

Allan Norman (@CelticKnotTweet) is a registered social worker and a solicitor at Celtic Knot – Solicitors and Social Workers.

The Costs of Home Care

Today, the Guardian published an article about the inequitable costs of home care services throughout England and the shrinking of access to council-paid support for care in the home.

The article refers to a survey and report comprised of a number of Freedom of Information requests. It says

The survey, seen by the Guardian, shows the average charge for an hour of home care has risen by 10% in the past two years – from £12.29 to £13.61.

Also stating

…there are wide disparities in the price people pay for care depending on their location. Home care, for example, is free in Tower Hamlets but costs £21.50 an hour in Brighton and Hove.

The data show that fewer older people – in excess of 7,000 – had their care services fully paid for by a local authority in 2011 a reduction of 11% compared to 2009.

This certainly reflects my experience in practice. There are a number of concerns that result from this report which merely confirms what everyone in the sector knows.

– Eligibility criteria are moving upwards.

If we look at the Fair Access to Care Services which are the supposed ‘standardised’ entry point to ‘care provision’ in local authorities – the lower ‘access’ point has moved higher. From moderate needs being ‘covered’ more local authorities are moving to only allowing ‘substantial’ or ‘critical’ needs to be covered. This moves a lot of the preventative work away from local authority provision.

This has a significant impact on the manner which personal budgets are implemented. A lot of the leisure type activities we see as examples are being pushed out in favour of budgets which are strictly intended to meet immediate personal care needs. Options for choice are much more limited in this context, particularly if a person does not have support around them.

– More people refusing care on the basis of cost

This is something I’m seeing much more as my own council has increased the costs of care. More people whom I assess as needing care are refusing it or refusing discharge from hospital solely on the issue of cost of care. There may be an assumption that ‘working hard all my life’ means that social care provision will be free in the future but it’s very hard to argue the value of a personal budget at (for example) £10 per hour when the charge will be £10 per hour. It is counter-intuitive and yet by bypassing the local authority ‘processes’ there is potential support that can be lost in terms of assistance in recruitment of staff/tax related issues. We are forcing more ‘cash in hand’ work sourced via Gumtree or notes in the newsagent windows.

– Longer term costs as people supported at home less

This also means that people remain at home without the support if they do not wish to pay for it and the potential for much higher costs will come at a later point. Either through preventable or delayable hospital admissions or by admission to residential care sooner than might have otherwise been necessary.  Seems obvious but I see it happening every day. We can’t ‘force’ care on anyone (putting the capacity issue aside for one moment) and if someone is adamant they don’t wish to pay for care which is assessed as being needed, we just sit on our collective hands and wait for things to deteriorate –by which case, it may be too late.

– Personal budgets and the ‘personalisation’ agenda.

I’ve mentioned some of the counterintuitive ways that services can cost as much as they are charged for – that’s particularly evident if we are considering a direct payment. There’s another problem with the implementation of the systems of ‘personalisation’ as they exist in reality. We were told initially it was intended to be a shift in ‘power’ from professional to user – which is fantastic – however the reality is often far from that. Assessment forms look similar (and ask similar questions in similar formats) to DLA application forms and focus heavily on physical rather than mental health needs.

The RAS (resource allocation system) pushes these assessments through an accountancy system which is non-transparent and spits out an ‘indicative budget’ based on a number of often unknown factors. So you get more money according to lack of ability to do things which perpetuates a top down model which doesn’t build on strengths of what someone CAN do – rather what they CAN’T do.

This process is convoluted and opaque. However well explained, sometimes people want good services delivered. Choice is only choice when it’s actually offers options. Seems obvious but it isn’t the reality.

– Commissioning decisions

I am sad to say when I arrange support via a managed personal budget, I can’t necessarily guarantee quality of care to the user. We use agencies that have won their tenders for the contracts with the council purely on the basis of cost rather than quality. There may be carers rushing in and out on minimum wage without being paid travel time, between 30 min visits in disparate geographical locations. Is it any wonder that people are refusing these kinds of services when we can’t guarantee consistency or quality of support. There are some fantastic care workers. Really, they are gems but it can be hit and miss because the way that costs are being driven down mean the agencies cut costs at every moment. We aren’t delivering value for money.

–

This shrinking of provisioned support for older adults and people with disabilities will lead to much higher long term care costs both with costs shifting to health care services as people are admitted sooner into hospitals and care costs as residential care becomes an option sooner. In some ways, more importantly, it will and does lead to a reduction in independence and quality of life which is much more important and can’t have a price put on it.