Torbay Care Trust has produced a new model of practice for its social workers, which looks really interesting.

In part, it's a response to the realities of working in a care trust where social workers are one of a number of professional groups in what is fundamentally an NHS organisation - as head of social work, Aaron Standon says, it's about "claiming a territory".

But it's also about that knotty subject of defining what social work with adults should look like in the personalisation era. There's a big focus on the social model of disability, which Aaron believes needs reiterating in practice, and trying to get social workers out of the more process-driven end of care management into more complex work, including safeguarding.

I was just wondering whether other organisations, particularly councils, were coming up with social work models for the personalisation era.

Another thing that interested me was that Torbay has a number of staff who have social work in their job title (head of social work, social work leads etc) - which seems pretty rare in England at least.

To be honest, I've become a bit numb to changes in the organisational structures and ways of working. Every new development seems to be the 'greatest change to social work' in x number of years. I hope, of course, this is, but I can't get terribly excited about it until things are actually moving. 

A move away from care management as a process would be A Good Thing - but I can't imagine a system that isn't target-based and which actually allows the practice that 'personalisation' is promising. I fear some of the difficulties of direct payments will be replicated in that service users who are able to advocate for themselves or know where to go for that support - young physically disabled adults - will absolutely benefit.

But where for older adults, people with mental health problems?  There is no reason all shouldn't be able to benefit and until I hear the concrete experiences of a wide range of people in these groups, I will remain a little sceptical (and not necessarily those with proactive social workers in the 'trial' projects who have more incentive and interest than the wider population groups). 

I wonder if the fact that Torbay is a 'Care Trust' rather than an Adult Services Dept has an influence on this. I wouldn't be surprised. 

I currently work in a multi-disciplinary team within the health service and the role of the social workers in the team desperately needs to be defined. We even discuss this amongst ourselves in our professional meetings because we can feel ourselves being genericised (I made that word up!). 

I hope there is a solution. 

There's something fishy about this whole personalisation agenda - if it sounds too good to be true it probably is

 There's an interesting story out today about personalisation breaching the employment rights of care staff and Peter Beresford has posted a blog about the increasing polarisation being generated by this topic. It seems there's a lot still to sort out with this whole personalisation agenda

It looks like Skills for Care is leading some work on defining what adult social work should look like in the personalisation era, in collaboration with the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services and General Social Care Council.

It's due to build on the GSCC-led roles and tasks of social work project but more specifically define what adult social workers should be expected to do in a world of personal budgets, self-assessment etc.

Skills for Care seems very keen to counter the idea that adult social workers will not have a role - or much of a role - in the future, but there seems to be loads of questions that it will need to answer:

• With increasing use of self-assessment and telephone assessments by non-qualified staff, what is the social work role in assessment?
• What's social work's role in arranging services given moves, for instance in Devon, to set up brokerage services involving finance and procurement staff working alongside social care staff (who will not necessarily be social workers) to negotiate contracts with providers?
• Who will be determining eligibility and resource allocations for people using personal budgets? Will this rationing role still be one for social workers, and if so, how does this fit with aspirations for practitioners to take on an advocacy role?
• Can one really define anything that social workers - and none other - can do with the exception of safeguarding?