In talking to many colleagues and looking at the bigger picture, I feel in order to bring the concept of personalisation and independent living agenda together with that of value for money, enablement and delivering services, we are going to see greater clarify and separation of the terms care and support.


I can foresee a situation where care is deemed to be what we need as humans to stop as going backwards in terms of health and wellbeing, so keeping us well and alive. I feel this will be deemed to be a civil right without conditions that will be the legal duty of councils to provide. It will be very similar to how it is now although the outcomes will be clearly and focused on care and welfare.


Support will in many situations be provided by councils or other funders. The aim of support will be to assist people to move forward in their development and in one way or another, make a contribution to society. The support will be conditional of taking on specific responsibilities in an contractual arrangement. This level of support may have as much as do with the aspirations of users as the level of their impairment.


It may be time for both service users and professionals to accept this almost brutal way of thinking, but in trying to produce an national system which is fair to everyone, this idea may indeed tick all the boxes.