Care for the self: 'community aged care packages'

The demographic pressure of population ageing and the economics of welfare state restructuring have been accompanied by innovation and service redesign across the field of aged care. Central to this process has been the development of community, or better said, home based forms of support, and the introduction of case management practices. These developments have intersected with, and been supported by, the drive towards an increasing recognition of the intended beneficiaries of the care as individuals. Yet, despite the repeated emphasis in policy and much of the literature on building services around the individual, rather than requiring individuals to fit into the service (Davies 1994; Fox and Raphael 1997; Scharf and Wenger 1995), there have been few, if any, attempts to closely examine the meaning of individualized service delivery in the field of aged care.