Health and social work services

Tender description

In 2007 the government policy document ‘Putting People First’ identified 4 key themes: — Facilitating greater access to universal services; — Building and making good use of social capital within local communities; — Ensuring people have greater choice and control over meeting their needs; — Making a strategic shift to supporting prevention and early intervention. Following this, in 2014 the Government introduced the Care Act which came into effect on 1.4.2015. This legislation states that Local Authorities must ‘establish and maintain a service for providing people in its own area with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers’. It must be accessible to, and proportionate to the needs of, those for whom it is being provided. The information and advice service must cover the needs of all its population, not just those who are in receipt of local authority funded care or support. People may often require information and advice before they need to access care or support services, to consider what actions they may take now to prevent or delay any need for care, or how they might plan to meet the cost of future care.