Abstract
Personalisation was a key element in reform to the Adult and Social Care system in England exploring long-term funding options in response to demographic change where people are increasingly living longer with complex conditions and needs (Department of Health, 2007). Personal budgets are central to this reform to enable recipients of social care to choose and commission their own services. Reform was not expected to require structural reorganisation but local authority leadership to promote genuine partnerships between social care providers, users and their carers as well as the wider community. However, there is potential for a shift in power to service users which goes beyond collaboration, especially where there is scope to build long-term relationships around long-term needs. This study is based on one local authority partner’s innovative development of local communities’ social capital around personal budgets for vulnerable adults, which took up the challenge that “personalisation has the potential to deliver services in new and different ways that are nearer to what service users and their carers want and need”. One of the gaps in research regards the crucial role of carers, which is fundamental to the personalisation agenda reaching its real objectives. Taking an asset-based approach to informal care via social networks, the local authority was able to empower a community-run organisation in one of its most deprived and diverse wards by brokering support for vulnerable residents and embracing a neighbourhood perspective to examine collective as well as individual solutions.
Highlights
This paper is the product of case study research into a neighbourhood innovation that sought to address service provision in Adult Social Care within the policy context of People, Place and Policy (2013): 7/3, pp. 153-167 p. 154
Themes comprised the policy and polity context where local contingencies and policy innovation collide; trust, that was much in evidence from data gathered from different perspectives; capacity building evolved from within the theoretical framework of asset-based approaches to community capital; and reference to some of the tension management, which related closely to the final theme of relocation of power, evidencing the existence of dynamic change within the case study arena
What emerged from wide-ranging discussions with those in receipt of Adult Social Care within the local community was a “frustration with systems and bureaucracy people turned to friends and neighbours for support” (Local Authority officer)
Summary
Carers are vital to the successful implementation of personalisation because the delivery of adult social care could not be sustained without the 6.4 million people who voluntarily fulfil this role (Larkin and Dickinson, 2011). An urgent need for a new adult care system was demonstrated in research conducted by the Labour Government from 2000 onwards with a total of 150 Councils with Social Services responsibilities for referrals, assessments and support packages (Department of Health (DoH), 2005). National and local leadership working with the local NHS, third and private sector providers, users and carers as well as the local community was considered essential to achieve system-wide transformation (DoH, 2007). Personal budgets for service users and their carers have been mandatory within care plans since 2012 (Miller and Larkin, 2013) so those assessed by local authorities as eligible for Adult Social Care support are at the centre of this reform
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