By Mike McNabb
Most commentators agree that personalisation is the greatest shake-up in service provision since the launch of the welfare state but it turns out it is fraught with dilemmas.
Prof John Glasby of Birmingham University went through some of the dilemmas, including whether direct care is, in effect, a privatised system and whether it overloads service users and their families. For social workers, the question is whether it undermines them or frees them up to do their jobs.
He pointed out that it allows social workers to mobilise the system while at the same time empowering service users to lead independent lives. Direct care workers speak passionately of the system, saying it allows professionals to feel they have made a difference, bringing job satisfaction.
He described it as putting the social back into social work and helping to reconnect professionals with the work they came in to do.
Glasby explored its use in health care and found personalisation could be used as a tool for joint working.
Mark Wardle, General Social Care Council chief executive, said personalisation could be viewed as the beginning of Every Adult Matters.
But for practitioners, codes of practice must be reviewed to ensure they can cope with this change. The challenge is to build a confident professional workforce to preserve its identity, he added.
Independent disability consultant Simon Stevens told audience that he has employed personal assistants since 1992 and expects the best. If he doesn't get it he complains. He pointed out that although he can sack a PA, a PA could walk out on him, leaving him in "a right mess".
For him the service user is the king/queen. It is important to distinguish between a personal assistant and a carer - the two were not the same. He identified other issues as standards versus personalisation, recruiting, funding and involvement of unions.
I was present at the same plenary. I found it very frustrating - it seemed more like a PR campaign to promote personalisation than a cool, reflective analysis. Criticism and questions from the floor were not taken on board and responded to thoughtfully, I felt - and I was not the only one to feel like that. Research on the pilots has shown that there were big problems with 2 client groups - older people and those with mental health issues. No one on the panel mentioned this though. When discussion was extended to the audience, questioners of this policy were fobbed off.