| Summary: | The Citizens Council provides NICE with a public perspective on overarching moral and ethical issues that NICE should take into account when producing guidance. Made up of members of the public, broadly representative of the adult UK population, the Council operates through a "citizens' jury" style meeting, to explore and respond to a question set by NICE. At its meeting in January 2013, the Citizens Council considered the question: ""What aspects of benefit, cost and need should NICE take into account when developing social care guidance?" The Council began its discussions by considering whether the methodology used for assessing health care intervention costs can be transported into social care. Our eventual response to this and final conclusion was, broadly, 'No' - current ways of measuring health and aspects of social care will not suffice. NICE needs to develop new methods and processes for social care because there are more differences than similarities. Over course of the two-day meeting, and as the result of the group discussions, we came up with a range of 'challenges' or 'recommendations' that we hope will inform the way that NICE approaches the development of standards and guidance for social care. Of these, we felt there are some clear priorities: 1. NICE should approach the development of quality standards and guidance for social care with 'fresh eyes' - those of the service user.2. NICE should produce new and original quality standards for social care that are authoritative and they must have 'teeth'.3. NICE standards and guidance should enable care to be built around each person's individual needs.4. NICE should consider integrating health and social care better to the point of producing joint health and social care guidance, and5. NICE standards and guidance should advocate that unpaid and informal carers are properly supported from an early stage and that these costs and benefits are taken account of in any calculations
|
|---|