Shaping Our Lives - from Outset to Outcome - What People Think of the Social Care Services They Use (Electronic book text)

Tracking the development of the Shaping our Lives project, which was established in 1996 to examine user defined outcomes, this report examines the way in which users and their organisations have achieved those outcomes. It highlights that there is a body of knowledge developing - usually professionalised - on outcomes, which often focuses on performance measures and targets and which is used to help social care agencies become more efficient and businesslike. This report adds to the debates about outcomes but from a user-led perspective. It emphasises that the definition of "good" outcomes properly belongs with service users themselves, who invariably want choice and control over the processes of delivery, rather than a menu of specific outcomes.