Care provision in Scotland: experiences of services and priorities for improvement

All the participants in the study described in part one of this article (Dewar et al 2003) were current service users and consequently had much to say about their experiences of the care system and services generally. Groups varied in their readiness to raise criticisms of the services. People had low expectations. The care they receive is often of the most basic kind but they express gratitude for it and show a reluctance to seek anything further. In particular, as might be expected, when people in care homes made potentially critical comments, they would either retract or temper them when we questioned them further.