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SocietyGuardian - glossary of society Category: People and society Date & country: 14/09/2007, UK Words: 527

Access
The extent to which service users are able to receive the care they require. The issues involved in accessibility include travelling long distances, physical access (eg premises suitable for wheelchairs), communication (eg interpreters), and the availability of culturally appropriate services.

Accommodated
Term used to describe children who are looked after by their local authority but are not subject to care orders.

Accountability
Relates to the ongoing debate surrounding the amount of information charities and voluntary organisations supply to their supporters and others on financial and performance matters. The debate centres around the possibility of charity league tables, which would rate performance.

Accounts
All operating bodies, including charities, are obliged by law to keep detailed accounts of financial expenditure and income, and to present them annually in a publicly available report. Registered charities earning less than £10,000 annually only have to present simple accounts.

Aftercare
This refers to the follow-up care provided to former residents of care homes and to ex-prisoners and former psychiatric patients.

Agenda for Change
Agenda for Change is the blueprint for the radical overhaul of the NHS pay system, and is an integral part of the government's drive to modernise Britain's public services. The proposals include creating a new, job-evaluated, pay structure covering all health service posts, based on the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. It will also establish common conditions for all NHS staff, merging hundreds of separate scales and grades into three national pay spines - one for doctors and dentists, one for nurses and midwives, and one for all other NHS employees, including administrative, clerical and ancillary staff.

Aggregate external finance
The total amount of money central government gives local government. Made up of the revenue support grant, business rates and ringfenced grants. Local authorities top this up with the council tax.

Aids
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome. When a person's immune system is damaged and they become susceptible to infections such as pneumonia, this is often said to be an incidence of Aids. Doctors often refer to this state as 'late stage HIV infection'.

Allocated case
A case that has been made the responsibility of a named social worker or other key worker until the case is closed, transferred or managed in another way so that the named worker is no longer responsible for it.

Almo
See arm's length management organisations

Almshouse
A residential home, usually for older people or the homeless, providing accommodation for the poor and needy. Almshouses are often charities in their own right, or are owned and run by other charities as part of their operations. There are around 1,750 almshouse charities providing more than 30,000 dwellings across all parts of the country.

Americorps
A popular initiative of former US president Bill Clinton, launched in 1993, to encourage disadvantaged young people to do a years voluntary work in return for financial help towards further education. The chancellor Gordon Brown is planning to introduce a similar initiative in the UK.

Antipsychotics
Drugs prescribed to treat people with a wide range of mental health problems but particularly schizophrenia and other forms of psychosis such as manic depression. The drugs mainly include tranquillisers, such as valium, but also lithium compounds used to treat manic and acute depression. Some people take antipsychotics orally, as a syrup or tablet, but some of the drugs are also available in injections. Although antipsychotic medication helps many people to control the symptoms of mental illness it can produce side effects ranging from mildly unpleasant to severe and potentially debilitating.

Antisocial behaviour order (Asbo)
An injunction made by councils, police or housing associations against any one over 10 years old causing harassment, alarm or distress to a household or a neighbourhood. Breaching the order is treated as a criminal offence and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

Architecture centres
Local centres aimed at encouraging public participation in planning and design, using initiatives such as community projects, exhibitions and seminars. Several have been opened since the government's influential urban taskforce recommended the establishment of an architecture centre in every major town.

Area based initiatives
Government schemes for reviving deprived communities aimed at tackling all the problems in a neighbourhood rather than one or two aspects. The idea is to address physical, economic and social decline in the round rather than in isolation.

Area committee
Can be set up by a council to devolve decision making powers to, or promote discussion at, a more local level. Area committees can cover an electoral ward or collection of wards, and are usually made up of the councillors that represent those wards. Often dismissed as talking shops with no real power.

Assertive outreach
An approach to working with severely mentally ill adults who do not effectively engage with traditional mental health services. Staff work with service users in their own environment - at home or in a cafe, a park or the street - rather than through appointments at an office or hospital.

Assessment
(1) Measuring the circumstances of an individual, family, group or community against one or more benchmarks in preparation for making a diagnosis or plan of action. (2) Inquiring into the financial resources of an individual or family to determine whether they should make a contribution towards a service.

Assured tenancy
The most common form of tenancy offered by housing associations. It allows housing associations to increase their rents to market levels if they get into financial trouble. Assured tenants have less legal protection than council tenants who are given secure tenancies.

Attendance allowance
A welfare benefit available to people over the age of 65 who require a high level of care from another person because of disability or illness.

Audit commission
Quango responsible for ensuring that public money is well spent. In charge of local government's best value inspection regime and responsible for auditing the finances of councils and NHS organisations.

Backbencher
A rank and file council member, as opposed to a member of a council's decision-making executive. Backbenchers vote on their local authority's policy framework and sit on scrutiny committees, as well as representing their constituents.

Band D
The council tax band that is supposed to cover the average home. Covers properties worth between £68,001 and £88,000 in April 1991. Newer properties are assessed on what their value would have been in 1991.

Battered baby syndrome
Refers to the clinical condition of a baby or young child who has suffered physical injury at the hands of parents or other carers. The term was coined by US paediatrician Dr Henry Kempe in the early 1960s who determined that many injuries to babies and young children, previously thought to be accidental, were in fact deliberately inflicted often over a prolonged period. Baby battering may involve violent shaking, slapping, punching, throwing or swinging of the child against a wall, burning with cigarettes, or blows to the head with an implement. It most commonly occurs in the first six months of life.

Beacon councils
Award scheme that aims to highlight good practice in delivering local government services. Other councils are then encouraged to learn from the beacons.

Beacon services
A scheme set up to identify and spread knowledge of examples of best practice in the NHS, highlighting innovative approaches to service provision in a range of areas, including accident and emergency, human resources, and reducing health inequalities.

Bed and breakfast unit
Government organisation set up in 2001 to tackle the number of people housed in bed and breakfast hotels. Wound up in 2004 after it achieved its target of ensuring that no homeless families were placed in B&Bs for more than six weeks.

Bedblocking
Phenomenon of older people being forced to stay in hospital beds because other forms of care, such as nursing homes or home care, are not available - thereby 'blocking' beds that could be used by other patients.

Benchmarking
A method used by public sector organisations, charities and private companies for gauging their performance by comparing it to the performance of other organisations, typically of a similar size. The government encourages public sector bodies to compare their score on various published performance indicators as way of improving public services. Many organisations are now members of so called 'benchmarking clubs' in which they compare published and unpublished performance information.

Beneficiary
Legal term referring to recipient groups or individuals of a charity's work or a grant-making body's funding, eg homeless people, children, animals.

Benefit fraud inspectorate
Established in 1997 to inspect local council performance on housing and council tax benefits. Run by the Department for Work and Pensions, the inspectorate is intended to counter concerns about high estimated levels of fraud in the benefits system.

Best value
Regime that aims to continuously improve local government performance through a programme of reviews and inspections. Councils must examine their services according to four guiding principles. They must challenge how, why and by whom a service is provided; compare its performance with that of other authorities; consult service users; and use competition to get the best service available.

Best value inspection service
Inspects local government services, giving them two marks of between zero and three - first for their performance and second for their likelihood of improving. Also responsible for producing annual league tables of overall council performance. Part of the audit commission.

Best value review
Councils have to review every service they provide over a five-year period. The reviews are based on four principles: comparing your service with others, challenging the way services are delivered, ensuring they can compete with other potential service providers and consulting the public on the service's future.

Big Lottery Fund
Distributes half the 'good causes' money raised by the national lottery, and is the main lottery funder for the voluntary sector. The BLF has been set up through the 'administrative merger' of the former Community Fund and New Opportunities Fund, although legislation to formally create the new fund has yet to be introduced. Grants are made for specific projects or initiatives.

Billing authority
Local authorities that produce bills for council tax. Covers all but county councils, which raise their cash through a precept on the bills sent out by smaller district authorities.

Blight
Decline of neighbourhoods earmarked for redevelopment. Sometimes referred to as planning blight, the decline usually involves a fall in house prices.

Booked admissions
The NHS national booked admissions scheme is an airline-style booking system, introduced in pilot form in 1999. Patients can arrange outpatient and inpatients admission times at their own convenience, leading to fewer cancelled operations, less bureaucracy and more efficient use of NHS time and resources.

Brownfield site
Land that has been built on before and is usually in an urban area. The land involved is often contaminated. Under a government target, 60% of all new development should be on brownfield sites.

Business improvement district
Government regeneration initiative that allows councils to raise extra money from local businesses, but only if firms vote in favour of the move. The money is likely to be used for a specific project, such as cleaning up litter and graffiti in an inner city area, rather than general local authority spending.

Business in the Community (BitC)
Business-led initiative to encourage private sector involvement in supporting their local communities financially and practically. The scheme attempts to standardise reporting about business impact on communities and gives awards for best practice. Three out of four FTSE100 companies are members.

Business rates
Charge levied on businesses to pay for council services. Paid into a national pool which the government then distributes to local authorities. Also known as national non-domestic rates, or NNDR.

Cabinet
A way of running local authorities based on the Westminster model of cabinet government. Up to 10 councillors are chosen to take on the day to day running of a local authority - they are either appointed by a directly elected mayor or elected by their fellow local politicians. All but the smallest councils have a cabinet.

Capacity
All the resources available to an organisation. Includes people, money, equipment, expertise and information.

Capacity building
Activities that aim to increase the ability of the charity and voluntary sector to provide services or take action, mainly relating to the training and development of staff in both campaign and hands-on work, and related jobs such as financial management and information technology. Sometimes related to building the infrastructure of the sector through umbrella bodies and networking groups.

Capital spending
Expenditure on new construction, land, improvements to existing property and the purchase of all other assets, such as computer hardware, that have an expected working life of more than one year.

Capping
The government uses this mechanism to block what it regards as excessive increases in the council tax. Labour ministers have been less enthusiastic about using capping than their Tory predecessors, but they retain the power to do so.

Care management
This term, introduced in the NHS and Community Care Act 1990, refers to the management of the care of anyone in receipt of a care package.

Care manager
The person responsible for coordinating a care package to an individual or group of people. They can be a social worker or a community nurse.

Care order
A court order - provided under part VI of the Children Act 1989 - directing that a child be placed in the care of a specific local authority, and giving shared parental responsibility to that council. It is granted when a court decides that a child is suffering or might suffer significant physical or emotional harm or educational problems as a result of receiving poor care at home. A care order stops when an adoption order is made or lapses when a young person reaches 18.

Care package
A group of services brought together to achieve one or more objectives of a care plan.

Care pathway
An approach to managing a specific disease or clinical condition that identifies at the outset what interventions are required and predicts the chronology of care and possibly the expected outcome of the treatment. The approach is designed to ease the passage of the patient by coordinating care through the healthcare system.

Care plan
A plan to provide care services to an individual or family. The plan should follow an assessment at a case conference or review and involve service users, carers and their families, as well as all relevant professionals.

Care programme
A detailed programme of care that contributes towards one of the goals of a care plan.

Care trust
Care trusts are local bodies responsible for delivering primary healthcare, community health services and social care for older people. Ministers believe care trusts will firmly integrate joint working between health and social care. The first trusts - developed from existing primary care trusts - will go live in April 2002.

Carer
A person who provides a substantial amount of care on a regular basis who is not employed to do so by an agency or organisation. A carer is usually a friend or relative looking after someone who is frail or ill at home.

Case closed (closed case)
A current case that appears on the social services department's records but for which there is no intention for further action to be taken unless a referral is made.

Case current (current case)
A case that requires action to be taken by social services. The initiative required can range from intensive casework and the provision of care to a decision and the administrative steps to close the case.

Case mix
Describes the mixture of clinical conditions - and severity of condition - found in a particular healthcare setting. An important factor in understanding clinical performance. Thus, a specialist heart surgery department might explain its higher than average mortality rates on 'case mix' grounds - in other words that it has more complex and difficult cases than the norm.

Cause related marketing
Businesses and charities link up to launch campaigns, or fundraising initiatives, using the power of the business's brand to improve the reach of the campaign. The partnership benefits the charity by increasing earnings, and the business by showing its community credentials, which in turn improves profits. The Tesco computers for schools campaign is an example.

Ceiling
Limits the funding increase a council can receive from the government every year. In 2002-3, it was set at 7% for councils that deliver education and social services, and at 10% for those that do not. The money saved through this mechanism helps pay for the funding floor.

Central-local partnership
Regular meeting of Local Government Association leaders and ministers, including those with education, crime and health briefs, to discuss policy issues.

Challenge Fund
A government bid to ease the housing crisis in the south east by earmarking £200m in 2003/2004 for homes that could be built quickly. A quarter of the money was set aside for developments that used modern building techniques such as factory-built pods.

Charitable foundation
An organisation, usually with a specific interest such as poverty, children or animals, that awards grants for specific projects in other charities and campaign groups, following a detailed application procedure. Trusts and foundations often grow out of business initiatives, or wealthy families and individuals, though they can also fundraise themselves. Some campaign organisations form 'charitable arms' to enable them to exploit charitable status to pay for research and non-political campaigning.

Charitable purpose
To register as a charity, an organisation must have purposes that are charitable. These have been defined via case law and by the charity commission over several years and include the relief of financial hardship, the advancement of education, the advancement of religion and other purposes for the benefit of the community. The draft charities bill sets out 12 charitable purposes and will open up charitable status to human rights organisations and amateur sports clubs for the first time.

Charities Aid Foundation (Caf)
UK based international body that helps non-government organisations and charities raise funds and manage their finances and resources. Campaigns on charity finance issues.

Charities Evaluation Service
Independent charity that provides quality audits, training and standards consultancy and other services for charities and voluntary organisations, helping to give an independent view of performance and increase accountability.

Charity law
Legal requirements for registered charities, many of which have been established or tested in the courts. Includes regulations on trustees, accounts and finances, campaigning and management.

Charter mark
An award for excellence in delivering a public service, administered by the Cabinet Office. Launched as part of former prime minister John Major's citizen's charter scheme.

Child protection
As outlined in the Children Act 1989, child protection involves adults as much as children; parental responsibility and the appointment of guardians are key issues. Child protection covers residential and daycare, supervision orders, children in care and foster homes.

Child protection case conference
This is a formal inter-agency meeting (with a social worker, health visitor, nursery worker, teacher, GP and police officer, etc) following an inquiry under section 47 of the Children Act to decide whether a child is at continuing risk of significant harm and should be placed on the child protection register.

Child protection plan
A detailed inter-agency plan setting out what must be done to protect a child from further harm, to promote the child's health and development and, if it is in the best interests of the child, to support the family to promote the child's welfare. The plan is agreed in outline at the first child protection conference and developed by the key worker, core professionals and, where possible, the child and family.

Child protection register
A case conference can decide to place a child on the register and make a child protection plan where there is concern for that child's physical and emotional well-being. This is a confidential list - held by social services - of every child in a local authority about whom there is serious concern of abuse or neglect. Registration aims to ensure that children and families are receiving necessary help, but it does not affect a parent's or guardian's legal responsibility towards their child.

Childminders
People paid by parents to care for children in their own homes for more than two hours a day. Childminders are registered and annually inspected by local authority inspectors under the Children Act 1989 in England and Wales.

Children Act 1989
This act gives every child the right to protection from abuse and exploitation and the right to have inquiries made to safeguard their welfare. Its central tenet is that children are usually best looked after within their family, with both parents playing a full role and without having to resort to legal proceedings. Children should always be consulted about what will happen to them and their family should, where possible, continue to be part of their lives. The act came into force in England and Wales in 1991 and - with some differences - in Northern Ireland in 1996.

Children in need
Under section 17 of the Children Act 1989, these are children who are disabled, or because of their vulnerability (due to abuse, neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, etc) are unlikely to reach or maintain a satisfactory level of health and development. The term also covers children whose health and development will be significantly impaired without the provision of support services.

Children's guardians
An adult - but not a solicitor - appointed by a court to act on behalf of a child or young person in legal proceedings. Formerly known as guardians ad litem.

Children's trust
Children's trusts are new organisations that will be piloted from late 2003 to plan, commission and finance children's services. They will bring together education, health and social services under the control of local authorities, which will either run them directly or contract them out to public interest companies. These trusts will be modelled loosely on care trusts, which provide integrated health and social services for older people and/or those with learning disabilities or mental health problems.

Choice based lettings
A government initiative aimed at ending the traditional points based system used by councils and housing associations to allocate homes to tenants. Under the project, which started in 2001, 27 councils are testing new ways to give tenants more of a consumer-style choice about where they are housed.

Chuggers, Chugging
See Face-to-face fundraising.

Citizenship
The government wants to encourage individuals, especially young people, to become 'good citizens', characterised by volunteering or community service. The government believes citizenship involves being 'informed, thoughtful and responsible citizens who are aware of their duties and rights'. Citizenship programmes will become compulsory in secondary schools for 11 to 16-year-olds from September 2002.

City manager
A powerful council chief executive who has control of the day to day running of a council in tandem with a directly elected mayor. One of the new political options for a council introduced in the Local Government Act 2000.

Civil society
The set of institutions, organisations and behaviour situated between the state, the business world, and the family, according to the London School of Economics. Includes voluntary and non-profit organisations, philanthropic institutions, social and political movements, and other forms of social participation and engagement.

Clinical governance
Initiative unveiled in December 1997 to improve and maintain clinical standards in trusts and GP surgeries throughout the NHS. It includes checks on risk avoidance, detection of adverse events and dissemination of good practice. Clinical governance is monitored by the commission for health improvement (CHI).

Clinician
A health professional who is directly involved in the care and treatment of patients, for example nurses, doctors, therapists, midwives.

Coalfields task force
Government regeneration committee that in a 1998 report set out plans to tackle the problems facing former coal mining communities after the collapse of the mining industry.

Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
A collection of therapies that aims to improve a person's mood by attempting to changing their behaviour and their thought processes. The therapist helps clients learn to identify the erroneous or destructive beliefs that cause their distress. The patient is encouraged to examine the evidence for and against their beliefs, to develop alternative ways of thinking, and develop coping strategies to reduce the adverse impact of negative thoughts. CBT is used to treat mental disorders, including depression, anxiety, eating disorders and schizophrenia.

Commissioning
The process by which the needs of the local population are identified, priorities set, then appropriate services are purchased and evaluated.

Committee of the Regions (CoR)
Set up in 1994, the CoR is essentially a consultation forum for European Union policies that affect either local or regional authorities across the EU. It is effectively UK local government's voice in Brussels.

Committee system
Century-old system of running local government that has now been largely scrapped in favour of directly elected mayors and council cabinets. Under the committee system, a panel of councillors took decisions relating to a specific service such as education.

Communities First, Wales
Initiative established by the national assembly for Wales that explores cross sector, multi-agency methods of creating policy and local service delivery involving the direct participation of the community. Involved in planning and developing the services so that social disadvantage and poverty are tackled most effectively at an area level.

Communities Scotland
The Scottish executive's regeneration and housing agency. It took over the role of Scottish Homes as regulator and funder of Scottish housing associations. It also coordinates Scotland's various social justice initiatives.

Community care
The provision of services and support to people affected by problems such as ageing, mental health, learning disabilities or physical and sensory disability. The services are necessary for the individual to be able to live independently in their own home or in homely surroundings in the community - including residential and nursing homes.

Community chests
A £50m initiative aimed at helping hundreds of community groups get started in deprived areas by funding small purchases such as computers, a mini bus or the hire of meeting space. The three-year programme, which started in 2001, is limited to bids of £5,000.

Community councils
Locally-based charities or voluntary groups that have an interest in the well-being of their community. They consult the local community and make known to public bodies the views of local people on all matters affecting them. Local authorities have a duty to consult community councils on how local services are delivered and other issues affecting their neighbourhoods. Community councils are arranged according to issues in local areas. For example, local community health councils and rural community councils.

Community empowerment fund
A £36m programme to help community and voluntary sector groups get involved in decisions about how public services are delivered in their area.

Community forum
A sounding board of 20 community activists set up in 2002 to inform ministers and the neighbourhood renewal unit about the impact of policies to tackle problems in the most deprived areas.

Community foundation
Local area based grant-making trusts that derive their income in gifts from trusts, bequests, shares or property to create a permanent endowment. This is then used to award cash of long-term benefit to voluntary and community groups within their area, providing a sustainable flow of funds for local good causes. The 29 most established community foundations held £92m in assets and made grants of £22m in 2000.

Community fund
See Big Lottery Fund.