SCIE media releases 2009

Personalising home care services

26 June 2009

The Social Care Institute for Excellence has today published a new briefing specifically designed for home care providers, to address the implications and opportunities that personalisation brings. Personalisation means including a person’s strengths, preferences and aspirations and putting them at the centre of the process of identifying their needs and making choices about what, who, how and when they are supported to live their lives. SCIE says that home care services are ideally placed to adapt provision for individuals because it is delivered to people in their homes.

The ‘Personalisation briefing for home care providers’ is one of a number of ‘At a glance’ guides that SCIE are producing to help commissioners and providers to deliver personalisation. The publication summarises the implications of personalisation for home care workers and managers; it also gives examples of new approaches being developed. For instance people are starting to demand support beyond traditional care, such as help with gardening, home maintenance or going out.

SCIE’s Chief Executive and Ceretas social care personality of the year, Julie Jones says:

“Personalisation offers more of an opportunity than a threat to home care providers; so long as they innovate and improve. The emphasis needs to be on getting a clear idea of how the individual wants to live their own life, and then giving assurance that you can provide a service which fits around them and their existing network. ”

Specifically, SCIE says that managers need to invest in developing an ‘outcome-focused’ service. Professional Care Ltd in Thurrock has embraced this concept enthusiastically. Many changes were needed including changes in attitudes, ways of working and status of care staff; monitoring has shown greatly improved feedback from people using services, and care staff taking more responsibility and increasingly using their own initiative.

Among other issues, personalisation for home care providers means recognising that the types of support that people who use services say they need may not be confined to personal care; developing systems and training to enable staff to expand their skills and to work in creative, person-centred ways; and thinking about how to contribute to the expansion of the personal assistant workforce and to the increasing need for specialist services by diversifying into these markets.

• See At a glance 7: Personalisation briefing for home care providers.

Media contact

Steve Palmer | Interim Press and Public Affairs Manager | T: 020 7089 7117 | Mobile: 07905 471 711 | Email: media@scie.org.uk