Introduction

In recent years, ‘social care’ has been used as a termencompassing not only its traditional meaning of the practical functionsprovided by personal social services, but also the professional function,primarily that of social work (Macdonald, 2000). It is this broad meaning ofthe term that will be utilised in this chapter scrutinising the expressedintentions of New Labour policy for social care. I will make both anintrinsic analysis of these intentions and an extrinsic critique of theirsocial care policy. There is much detail to be evaluated in NewLabour’s social care policy targets and this chapter will focus onsome of the key areas. A broad critique suggests that, where targets areexplicit, they have proved of limited value in judging action againstintention, and where they are less explicit, or more qualitative, it is hardto match outcome to original intention. In addition, many policy intentionsare comparatively new and not embedded into practice sufficiently to provideevidence for evaluation.

The areas of social care policy that were mentioned in New Labour’sManifesto commitments (Labour Party, 1997) provide little to evaluate. Therelevant 177 Manifesto commitments relate to:

• • long-term care (100 and 101);

• • reduction in time from arrest to court disposal forpersistent young offenders (68);

• • the introduction of child protection orders (73);

• • the duty on local councils to protect the homeless (92);

• • comprehensive civil rights for disabled people (147).

These add up to six pledges upon which to cast judgement (see Table 9.1).Many of New Labour’s social care changes have come through otherdevelopments, such as the move from Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT)to Best Value (see Chapter Three of this volume). The changes resulting fromBest Value in the social care policy arena are located in the PersonalSocial Services Performance Assessment Framework (PSSPAF), and will beevaluated later in this chapter.

Despite this thin evidence of commitment, New Labour in government hasproduced an explosion of activity in relation to social care (Clarke et al,2000; Toynbee and Walker, 2001).