Personalization and Community Care: A Case Study of the British System

Ageing Int (2012) 37:1624

DOI 10.1007/s12126-011-9139-7

Jason L. Powell

Published online: 3 December 2011# Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011

Abstract In the United Kingdom, personalisation services are developing as a social policy response to user demands for more tailored, effective and flexible forms of health and social care support. This process is being implemented under the personalization which is also seen as a vehicle for promoting service user rights through increasing participation, empowerment and control while also promoting self-restraint by having users manage the costs of their health and social care. This paper reviews the background to the emergence of this policy shift, assesses the existing research evidence for personalization albeit limited and identifies themes for future policy research in this area.

Keywords Personal care . Social work . Public policy . England

Introduction

The move to personalization in community care has been presented as part of consumerist agenda that is increasingly associated with western social policy (Powell 2009). Today, public services in modern society also face new demand side challenges in a global economic recession. At the same time, individuals and populations in western culture have expectations of the State to deliver to meet their health and care needs from resources to services to provide support. These increased expectations are strongly felt in public services and challenge the traditional relationship between the State and vulnerable groups in modern societies such as older people, disabled people and people with mental illness, and people who are frail and sick.

The traditional focus has been on the State providing for individuals. Part of a recasting of that relationship has been on the entrenchment of personalization as a new language in western culture for the responsibility for social welfare (Dittrich 2009).

J. L. Powell (*)

University of Central Lancashire, Lancashire, UK e-mail: [email protected]

Personalization and Community Care: A Case Study of the British System

Ageing Int (2012) 37:1624 17

To put simply, personalization is a means to focus more on the individual and community oriented provision rather than the State. Using the UK as a case study, sheds light on wider contemporary trends on community care policy in western society in general and Great Britain more specifically.

But is this too simplistic a conceptualization? Why and how...