Background and aims

The 1996 Community Care (Direct Payments) Act, which came into force on 1April 1997, has been described as holding out “the potential for themost fundamental reorganisation of welfare for half a century”(Oliver and Sapey, 1999, p 175). After longstanding pressure from a range ofuser groups, the Act empowered social services departments to make cashpayments to service users aged between 18 and 65 in lieu of direct serviceprovision. Although progress has since been slow, more and more authoritieshave begun to implement direct payment schemes and the original Act has beenextended to include older people, younger people aged 16 and 17, carers andthe parents of disabled children. As recent research has begun to highlightthe strengths and weaknesses of direct payments, a comprehensiveintroductory text is required to guide practitioners through the issues atstake in this fundamental area of practice, summarising current knowledgeabout good practice and exploring the implications of direct payments, bothfor service users and for social work staff.

Against this background, Social work and direct paymentsseeks to:

• • review the history of direct payments, from the rise of theIndependent Living Movement, through indirect payments to the 1996Direct Payments Act and subsequent extensions to other user groups(Chapters Two to Four);

• • chart the progress of direct payments and the pace ofimplementation (Chapter Five);

• • explore the experience of different user groups and therelevance of issues such as ethnicity and sexuality (ChapterSix);

• • examine the advantages and limitations of direct payments(Chapters Seven and Eight);

• • review the practical issues which managing direct paymentsraises (Chapter Nine);

• • identify the implications for policy makers and socialworkers (Chapter Ten);

• • outline useful resources for those interested in finding outmore about direct payments (Appendix).

Current literature

At the time of writing (2001), there has not yet been a comprehensiveintroductory book on the topic. Despite this, Social work and directpayments draws on three main types of literature:

• 1. Official guidance: policy and practice guidanceproduced by the Department of Health (DoH) (1997a, 2000a) providesdetailed guidelines about the implementation and purpose of directpayments. This is accompanied by easily accessible guidance forusers with learning difficulties (DoH, 2000b) and a number ofinformation videos (DoH, 1998c, 1999). Further sources of officialguidance are set out in the Appendix.