ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates some of the financial aspects of social care. The term assessment and care management' covers social work tasks such as receiving referrals, assessing need, defining eligibility, and arranging and reviewing packages of care. But the major concern was simply where the money would come from, and how it could be found at the same time as the demands on the social care system were increasing under the Care Act 2014, and further cuts were being made to local authority budgets. The chapter discusses the costs of social care, and the complexities of the financial issues who pays, who spends, how much on what, and who decides. They have professional knowledge about need and support, and service users have their requests, their demands and their unspoken needs; but the state sets the overall priorities and budget, and the organisation they work for will have its own policies and procedures about decision making and spending.
