NICE Citizens Council publishes final report on social care guidance

The Citizens Council, which advises the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, has published its final report on factors that it believes should be considered when NICE develops social care guidance.
At a two-day meeting in early 2013, the 30 members of the public who make up the Citizens Council discussed which aspects of benefit, cost, and need NICE should bear in mind when producing guidance on social care. NICE assumed responsibility for developing guidance and quality standards for social care from April 2013.

As this is a new area of work for NICE, the Council’s advice is informing the development of processes and methods, and action is already being taken based on the Council’s conclusions.

Professor David Haslam, Chair of NICE, said: “The NICE Board has welcomed the Citizens Council report on factors that it thinks should be taken into consideration when NICE develops social care guidance. The complex nature of social care was evident in the Council’s discussions.

“One of the Council’s conclusions is that the concept of ‘need’ in social care is different to need in healthcare, where need is often determined by a health professional. They noted that in social care ‘need’ is determined and defined by the service user, and is much broader than the health context. The Council also highlighted that, given the wider remit of social care, enabling a personalised service is very likely to improve quality of life for disadvantaged people. Importantly, an overwhelming majority of the Council (nearly 70%) felt that NICE needs a new way of applying its methods when developing social care guidance and standards.

“In response to the Council’s conclusions, our new Social Care programme has already started to consider how the costs and benefits from informal care are taken into account in economic calculations, as part of our work developing methodologies of economic assessment for social care. And a person-centred approach will be central to NICE’s development of quality standards, as demonstrated through the two quality standards already produced as part of the social care pilot programme.

“The Citizens Council makes an important contribution to NICE’s work by providing a snapshot of what the general public thinks. NICE’s new remit for social care charges us with taking into account ‘the broad balance between the benefits and costs’ of care and people’s ‘degree of need’ for care when producing guidance and standards. This Citizens Council report will help us deliver the new remit. I would like to thank the Council for its invaluable perspective and informative deliberations on this topic.”