Social work practice with carers “lacks clarity and consistency”, resulting in carers’ needs not being assessed or informing service users’ support plans, research has found.

Though carers were involved in all stages of the personal budgets process for service users, separate assessments of their needs were uncommon and seldom conducted before service user support was planned, found the York University study on carers and personalisation.  Researchers based their findings on a survey of 16 councils, in-depth research in three of these and interviews with carers and service users.

Carers’ role valued but assessed narrowly

Carers were commonly involved in supporting service users who had cognitive or communication impairments during assessment and this role was valued by service users and practitioners alike.

Managers and practitioners said carers were routinely asked about their willingness to continue providing support at this stage, aided by prompts on service users’ assessments forms, and some practitioners used these to ask carers about their own support needs.