Need Social Care?

Personalisation

What does personalisation mean?

What's happening about personalisation in Worcestershire?

When will it happen?

What are other local authorities doing?

Does it only affect Adult Social Care Services?

What does personalisation mean?

The Government wants to ensure that everyone who needs adult social care, whether provided by statutory services or funded by themselves, receives support in a way that is personal to, and controlled by, the individual.

To achieve personalisation for all service users, adult social services will need to transform the way that services are currently arranged and delivered.

Key parts of this transformation are for people to have control over how their support is planned and arranged and to be allocated an Individual Budget that they can spend to achieve their assessed outcomes.  In Worcestershire, the transformation process has been called 'The Choice and Control Programme'.

The 'Putting People First  (393.52 KB)' document explains the Government's personalisation agenda in more detail.

What's happening about personalisation in Worcestershire?

The transformation of social care services described in 'Putting People First' is the biggest change to social care since the Community Care legislation in the early 1990s.  Government expects local authorities to have made 'significant progress' towards the personalisation agenda by 2011 and although this sounds a long way off there is a lot of work that needs to be done.

Worcestershire has decided that the best way to make sure that we meet the Government's agenda is to have an organised change programme that has been called 'Choice and Control'.

Staff at all levels are involved in the programme by being on project boards, working groups, a champions network, staff events, newsletters et cetera.  Other stakeholders are also involved in the programme through representation on the programme's boards and groups, special events, newsletters and existing networks.

What are other authorities doing?

All authorities are at different stages of transforming their social care services.  Some have already decided to use the Individual Budget process as the mainstream way of delivering their adult social care services by being part of national pilots.  Others, including Worcestershire, have signed up to 'In Control' which is a partnership between local authorities, charities, Government and other organisations to look at and define best practice in self-directed support and change in the social care system.

Does it only affect adult social care services?

As many of the systems and processes that we currently use will have to change, the support services within the Adult and Community Services directorate will all be affected and will need to change as well.

There will also be an impact on other directorates within the council, such as finance for example, as budgets may need to be organised and managed differently.  Community services such as leisure, cultural and housing services will also need to adapt to make sure that they are accessible and available to people who want to include a range of different activities in their support plans.

Independent and voluntary social care organisations will need to change to make sure that they are able to offer services that people will want to buy from them in the future.  Supporting these services to change is included in the Choice and Control programme.