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Meals on Wheels (MoWs) provide daily meals and social contact to adults who need support to live in the community. Many adults in England need help with shopping for food and preparing meals. MoWs could be essential for these individuals. In addition, MoWs could potentially lead to considerable savings for adult social care services and the NHS. However, many councils in England have stopped providing MoWs because of cuts in social care budgets. This leaves many individuals unable to access this essential service. To complicate matters further, there is no single model of MoWs provision. This makes it difficult to establish an evidence base to inform discussions about the role MoWs services have in contemporary social care. The proposed scoping review will explore the number and types of existing MoWs provision models that operate in England, which will help offer a comprehensive picture of provision of meals services for adults with care and support needs.

Older prisoners are the fastest growing subgroup in the English and Welsh prison estate. Older prisoners have high levels of health and social care needs. This mixed-method study involved the distribution of a questionnaire examining the availability of health and social care services for older prisoners to all prisons housing adult males in England and Wales, followed by qualitative telephone interviews with representatives from eight prisons. Over half of establishments had some contact with external social care services, but reported significant difficulties in arranging the care for individuals. A professional lead for older prisoners had been identified in 81% of establishments; however, the value of this role to positively affect practice appeared questionable. Statutory social care was often non-existent in prison due to the lack of understanding of what it constituted and who was responsible for its provision.

Advanced and anticipatory care planning (acp) are processes for finding out and recording clients’ preferences for care and treatment in the future, and distinct from professional care planning as part of care management in coordinating service delivery. Developing from palliative care practice in recording patients’ decisions to refuse treatment made in advance of possible mental incapacity at end of life, acp processes have recently extended to health and social care provision for long-term conditions. The process aims to engage clients, family members and informal caregivers in thinking ahead about managing difficult care situations. Research indicates that this increases clients’ satisfaction with services and improves the likelihood of clients’ and family preferences being achieved. Acp practice is an important development in theorising interpersonal social work practice in long-term care services, where the social work role has been seen as focused on management and coordination. It also strengthens clients’ participation in decision-making in social care services., O planeamento antecipado de cuidados (acp) comporta processos que permitem descobrir e registar as preferências pessoais relativas a cuidados e tratamentos em situações futuras bem como diferenciar esta planificação da planificação profissional de cuidados a dirigir a um dado indivíduo. Desenvolvido a partir da aplicação de cuidados paliativos sustentados pela gravação das decisões dos doentes referentes à recusa antecipada de tratamento, prevenindo situações de incapacidade cognitiva no final da vida, os processos de acp alargaram-se, recentemente, aos cuidados de saúde e cuidados de protecção social prolongados. Este processo tem como objectivo envolver clientes, famílias e outros cuidadores informais no sentido de se prepararem para pensar antecipadamente acerca das exigências de situações de necessidade de cuidados difíceis. A investigação demonstra que esse processo aumenta a satisfação dos clientes com os serviços e amplia a probabilidade de se verem alcançadas as escolhas de clientes e famílias. O acp é um avanço importante na teorização do serviço social relativamente às questões específicas da prestação de serviços de longa duração, quando o papel destes serviços se perspectivava apenas focalizado na gestão e coordenação dos casos. Este processo, fortalece, também, a participação dos clientes na tomada de decisão sobre os serviços sociais a adequar à sua situação.