Kate Weiner | PubMed Health

PubMed2006

Care management for older people: does integration make a difference?

England and Northern Ireland provide examples of different degrees of integration of health and social care within broadly similar administrative and funding frameworks. This paper examines whether integrated structures appear to impact upon the operation of care management, a key approach to providing coordinated care for vulnerable older people. There appeared to be more evidence of integrated practice between health and social care in Northern Ireland than England, although some key features, such as intensive care management, were no more evident. It is concluded that further investigation is required as to the extent to which integrated structures have impacted upon patterns of professional working and underlying beliefs about roles.

Aged↗

PubMed2006

Care managers' time use: differences between community mental health and older people's services in the United Kingdom.

Since the community care reforms of the early 1990s, care management in the United Kingdom has become the usual means of arranging services for even the most straightforward of social care needs. This paper presents data from a diary study of care managers' time use, from a sample of social services commissioning organizations representing the most common forms of care management practiced in England at the end of the 20th century. It compares the working practices of care managers in community mental health service settings to the practices of those situated in older people's services. Evidence is provided to suggest that while the former follow a more clinical model of care management, those working with older people take an almost exclusively administrative approach to their work. In addition, the multidisciplinary nature of mental health service teams appears to facilitate a more integrated health and social care approach to care management compared to the approach to older people's services. Further enquiry is needed as to the comparative effectiveness of these different modes of working in each service setting.

Adolescent↗