Lewisham Case Management Scheme report to management group

<p>A longstanding concern has been the need to develop more effective means for the collaboration and co-ordination of care in the community for people requiring long-term care. The Griffiths Report (Griffiths, 1988) highlighted the need to create effective models of case management to enable this co-ordination to occur, and this has become one of the bases of the White Paper: "Caring for People." (Cm 849), which stated the need "... to make proper assessment of need and good case management the cornerstone of high quality care..." (para 1.11).

<p><p><p>The Lewisham Case Management Scheme involves the establishment and evaluation of a model of case management based on the principles of the original Kent Community Care Scheme in Thanet in the late 1970s and developed in Gateshead and Darlington. These schemes have involved the decentralisation of control of resources to front line social workers acting as case managers, so that they can devise more flexible and appropriate packages of care to meet the needs of very vulnerable elderly people. The Lewisham project is unique in so much as it focuses on providing care to people with a dementing illness and their carers, living in their own homes, and the service will be based in an established multi-disciplinary and multi-agency community mental health team for the elderly.