Personalisation
“Personalisation means
thinking about public services and social care in an entirely different way
– starting with the person rather than the service. It will require the
transformation of adult social care.” Julie Jones, Chief Executive, SCIE
So what is personalisation really?
It is an
attempt by the Government to move social care from providing individuals
with a set of services, to supporting them to live a life, which originated
in learning disability services through the “In Control” programme.
There have also been a number of pilot projects throughout the country that
have been evaluated. This has provided guidance and led to the development
of a toolkit for local authorities.
Personalisation is designed to be much more flexible than direct payments
because it gives individual options to people who do not want to manage the
money themselves as well as those that do.
The whole process is based on a much simpler (self) assessment which
identifies the overall level of need a person has. This is then translated
into a designated budget rather than an offer of specific services.
The individual, along with those they want supporting them then decide how
the budget is to be spent. They are given help and advice with this
including information about the costs of existing services. The money can be
managed by the individual or by someone else on their behalf, such as social
services or another agency.
Personalised budgets must be offered to anyone needing long term social care
support by 31 March 2011, but emergency and very short term services are
excluded. At the moment the only services we know will be included are
social care services but it is possible it may also cover some Supporting
People and Health funded support.
What are Derbyshire County Council Doing?
They have set up a programme board and employed a programme manager, Katey
Twyford to lead the work. In addition Louise Swain is leading the work on
stakeholder engagement which covers working with the public as well as the
voluntary and independent sectors. The programme has seven separate projects
some of which will involve representation from the voluntary sector in addition
to involvement from service users and family carers. These are:
- Information, advice and advocacy
- Self-directed support
- Service redesign
- Lifetime homes
- Web based purchasing
- Organisational Stability
- Stakeholder engagement
What are the key issues for the Voluntary Sector?
- Getting involved in the planning stage
- Training and development needs to understand and prepare for the changes
- Supporting individuals concerned by the planned changes
- Changing patterns of commissioning with a move from block contracts
- Marketing services to individuals rather than to the statutory sector
- Offering additional services such as brokerage, budget management and/or
employment
- Power shift from commissioners to service users
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