Personalisation and housing: connections, challenges and opportunities

This article refers to common values and principles underlying personalisation and housing, and the importance of personalisation for providers like Hanover (a leading provider of housing and support services for older people). It also refers to challenges that personalisation presents for supported housing services, such as extra care. Possible responses to these challenges include a re‐emphasis on listening to what residents ‐ as well as commissioners ‐ want, an honest appraisal of the concept of choice and its implications, especially in services such as extra care, and asking whether people might still be asked to choose a ‘package’ of core services, in order to retain sustainable models that will support other people now and in the future. The article then describes the Housing Associations' Charitable Trust's (hact's) Up2Us project, a key initiative to put supported housing service users centre stage in commissioning and purchasing care and support, in which Hanover and the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham are among the partners.