The Care Act 2014 gave local authorities in England broad duties around wellbeing, and responsibility to ensure the availability of good quality, personalised social care and support services for people who need them. These responsibilities are for all people needing support, whether that is publicly or privately funded. In exercising their duties, councils have a responsibility for ‘market-shaping’: that is, understanding the supply and demand for care, and the types of services and support needed now and in the future, and steering the market accordingly. Changes to the implementation of the Care Act removed some of the levers that might have brought self-funders into the mainstream of local authority responsibilities. This article draws on sixty-four qualitative interviews undertaken as part of a larger study on market-shaping and personalisation of care, and reflects on the experience of self-funders and the approach to them adopted by local authorities and provider organisations. The findings indicate that self-funders are still largely bystanders to local authority market shaping strategies, despite being both impacted by those strategies and significantly influencing the markets in which they operate.

2014 年《护理法》赋予英格兰地方当局在福祉方面的广泛职责，并有责任确保为有需要的人提供优质、个性化的社会护理和支持服务。这些责任适用于所有需要支持的人，无论是公共资助还是私人资助。在行使职责时，理事会有责任“塑造市场”：即了解护理的供需情况，以及现在和未来需要的服务和支持类型，并据此引导市场。对《护理法》实施的修改消除了一些可能将自筹资金者带入地方当局职责主流的杠杆。本文借鉴了作为有关市场塑造和护理个性化的大型研究的一部分而进行的 64 次定性访谈，并反映了自筹资金者的经验以及地方当局和提供者组织采用的方法。调查结果表明，自筹资金者在很大程度上仍然是地方政府市场塑造战略的旁观者，尽管他们既受到这些战略的影响，又对他们经营所在的市场产生了重大影响。