Social care

Navigating Care

Older people and families often find the care system very hard to navigate due to its complexity and their low awareness of, and difficulty in, accessing information and advice. This paper identifies what older people and their families need to navigate the care system, and how they would prefer to receive this help.

Key findings

We present options on how gaps in the current provision can be addressed, as well as how the challenges of the future care system might also be met.

These include:

  • Creating “first stop shops” at national and/or local level
  • Developing the role of local authorities as local “first stop shops” or commissioners of information, advice and advocacy
  • Stimulating a market for brokerage services to operate alongside an information, advice and advocacy service

A new navigation system, consisting of a national first stop shop combined with a network of local first stops, could become an interface between the individual and the range of statutory agencies, third sector and commercial organisations, which make up the future mixed market of care and support. However the most appropriate approach to helping people navigate the care system now and in the future must be decided in conjunction with wider decisions regarding the architecture of a future care system.

Further reading

Who cares?
The experience of social care workers, and the enforcement of employment rights in the sector
·
Nye Cominetti
To govern is to choose
The choices facing the Chancellor this autumn
·
Torsten Bell, Adam Corlett, Daniel Tomlinson
A caring tax rise?
The impacts of a potential increase in National Insurance
·
Torsten Bell, Adam Corlett