As is often the case with any new and fundamentally different policy initiative, the passage of the 1996 Community Care (Direct Payments) Act was greeted with a range of different responses from a range of different stakeholders. For some disabled academics and activists, direct payments held out “the potential for the most fundamental reorganisation of welfare for half a century” (Oliver and Sapey, 1999, p 175). However, for some local authorities, direct payments were little more than a form of “privatisation by the back door” (Hasler, 1999, p 7), introduced by a Conservative government as part of a series of measures to erode traditional public services. For some social workers, direct payments are an exciting new way of working that has the potential to deliver traditional commitments to empower service users and work with them rather than for them. For others, direct payments are a step too far too soon, and doubts remain as to whether so-called ‘vulnerable people’ are truly able to manage their own services (Fruin, 2000, p 17):

For policy makers too, direct payments have attracted very different responses. As we shall see below, the former Conservative government was, for a long time, resistant to the concept of direct payments. However, over time the efficacy of direct payments has found favour with politicians of all persuasions. As we shall argue in this overview of the implementation of direct payments, these contradictory responses are the result of two main factors. First, direct payments are a considerable challenge to previous ways of working, and this tends to evoke polarised responses (either clear and vocal commitment or considerable hostility). Second, the policy of direct payments, as initially conceived, had a number of discrepancies and inconsistencies. While these could be overlooked while the policy was in its infancy, direct payments are now sufficiently mainstream that these issues need to be explicitly addressed if the number of recipients is to expand significantly.

Despite this, our own view is that these issues are all limitations in the way in which direct payments have been operationalised and implemented, not a product of the concept of direct payments itself.