Assessing the social support needs of visually impaired people: the impact of 'Community Care'

Abstract

This paper reports on the first phase of a study examining the accessibility to visually impaired people of appropriate assessment and social support in the context of the implementation of the NHS and Community Care Act 1990. It describes how the 1992/93 and 1993/94 Community Care Plans, produced by local authority social services departments in collaboration with health and other agencies, discussed the needs of visually impaired people and the services available or planned to meet them, and how social services departments' community care assessment arrangements were set out in these plans. The findings suggest a lack of specific attention to the referral and assessment of visually impaired people. The system of certification and registration using Form BD8 seems not to have been integrated into the new 'generic' assessment arrangements for community care. The promise held out by 'community care' therefore seems, so far, not to have made a positive impact on the long-standing problems surrounding BD8 procedures and the low priority typically given to visual impairment.