This project explores the potential for co-production to improve outcomes for those individuals (along with their families and support networks) who are intended to benefit from the move towards greater personalisation of care and support services, including people who have personal budgets or are self funders.
The call for care services to be ‘personalised’ has gathered strength over the last two decades and is a major policy objective of the Coalition Government. The central idea is that services will be provided in ways that empower individuals, cater for their personal needs and preferences, and enable them to take more control over what happens to them.
A more personalised approach to public service provision can genuinely help to improve individuals’ autonomy and self determination, as well as the quality of their lives. But personal budgets on their own will not be enough to ensure that people have the opportunity and support to achieve the outcomes they want, particularly in the context of public austerity. Co-production offers opportunities to realise the ambitions of ‘personalisation’ when public funds are increasingly scarce, without triggering adverse effects for those intended to benefit from social care.
Read the interim report here.
This project is supported by SCIE, and the Think Local Act Personal partnership.
For further information contact julia.slay@neweconomics.org