Can personalisation be a reality for older people? Available to Purchase

While the future funding of social care currently has perhaps the highest public profile in the need to reform social care, not far behind is the agenda to transform social care from its prevailing rigid and service‐centred culture to one that is personalised. The core driver used by the government to achieve personalisation is to give people ‘choice and control’ through the provision of personal budgets. This is the allocation of sums of money ‘up front’ to allow people to choose and commission their own support systems. The new coalition government has signalled its wish to not only endorse this approach, but to accelerate its implementation. However, there is growing evidence that while this will work very well for people and those around them with the will, the skills and the time to make a success of it, for most it will not result in real change. This is especially the case for older people. This article explores this issue, but carries the message that personalisation can and should be made a reality for all service users and all older people. However, it will require a commitment to a transformational change programme within councils that goes beyond simply achieving well against the former government's performance indicator of numbers with personal budgets.