SCIE Report 20: Personalisation: a rough guide

By Sarah Carr

Published: October 2008

Updated: April 2010

Review date: April 2013

This publication aims to tell the story so far about the personalisation of adult social care services. It is intended to set out our current understanding of personalisation and its implementation, exploring what personalisation is, where the idea came from and placing the transformation of adult social care in the wider public service reform agenda.

Key points

The report contains the following key messages and recommendations:

By identifying and transferring knowledge about good practice, SCIE has a special role to play in transforming adult social care services.
Person-centred planning and self-directed support will need to become mainstream
It will ultimately mean universal services such as transport, housing and education are accessible to all citizens.
The personalised system will need to be cost-effective and sustainable in the long term.
Approaches to early intervention and prevention need to develop further so that people are encouraged to stay healthy and independent.
The social care workforce will need to acquire new skills.

Context

SCIE is a signatory to the Putting People First concordat which set out the shared commitment to finding new ways to improve adult social care in England. Personalisation means thinking about public services and social care in an entirely different way – starting with the person and their individual circumstances rather than the service. It requires the transformation of adult social care.

Purpose

By identifying and transferring knowledge about good practice, SCIE is playing a full part in transforming social care services for adults. This guide aims to tell the story so far about the personalisation of adult social care services.

Audience

This guide is aimed at frontline practitioners and first-line managers in statutory and independent sector social care services, although it is an indispensable summary for all those interested in this important area.

About the development of this report

Background

This guide is the second version produced to support the personalisation agenda, with the first version published in October 2008. Personalisation is a challenging field because it has continuously developed through research and practice experience since policy inception. It is therefore presented as a report and a 'rough guide', since the evidence base for particular models is not yet sufficiently strong to support strong recommendations for particular practice models. The first edition was extremely well received by the sector, and the guide will be revised to reflect emerging research findings.

Scoping and Searching

Original scopes for the first edition were carried out in January and September 2008; the revised guide is based on scoping and searching in January 2010.

Stakeholder involvement

SCIE has an in-house specialist in personalisation (Senior Research Analyst) who identified additional material (including what were then brand new policy documents), carried out the synthesis, and worked with experts. The Partners' Council consultation informed the work. For the first version, external peer review was undertaken by a Senior Fellow of the King's Fund, and Deparment of Health lead for personalisation was consulted, as were Putting People First Delivery Coordination Group (PPFDCG), and Transforming Adult Social Care Board. The current version was informed by customer feedback, changing policy and new research, with consultation from PPFDCG).