Policy
Key points from the provider perspective
- Much existing care and support provided by voluntary organisations is already substantially personalised - in the broadest sense of the term - outcomes-focused and impacting positively on lives and communities. Plans and systems to develop and extend personalisation need to build on this experience.
- The extent to which providers are able to offer personalised care and support is largely dependent on the contractual framework within which they are required to work. Whilst voluntary sector providers have often been at the forefront of moves towards personalisation, the scale of the transition still to be made to fully personalised support should not be underestimated.
- Personalisation is a concept, not a system. Specific management accounting and resource allocation systems are tools that may facilitate routes to personalised support in certain circumstances, but cannot in themselves represent the whole solution.
- For some people, a cash allocation to arrange their own support within a mixed market of provision will be the route to personalisation: others may find it through greater flexibility or responsiveness within existing support arrangements, without direct control over resources through personal purchasing. A system set up to offer a choice of provision to an older person with significant personal care needs, for example, may not be equally successful in delivering personalised support to someone with support needs arising from long-term substance dependency.
- Personalised support arrangements may, in some instances, result in a lower cost than current service provision, but this should not be assumed from the outset, far less become the driving imperative behind implementation methods for personalisation .
- The quality of care and support, and ways of measuring and evidencing it, are crucial to the success of personalisation - however, agreement on what constitutes quality and how to measure it remains elusive.
The programme is represented on a range of national policy groups and aims to gather provider views on policy through the policy network.