Debates in Personalisation

As one of the editors suggests, personalisation is a bit like Marmite—you either love it or you hate it (Glasby, 2014). This book immediately challenges the reader to engage with perspectives from both advocates and critics in one space. This is a welcome approach to a limited body of literature on the subject which, to date, has struggled to provide balance and measure to the debate, as passion for the concept runs high at both ends of the spectrum. As the editors acknowledge, personalisation means different things to different people and Needham's insightful guided tour through alternative policy narratives demonstrates how different interpretations explain the past, the present and the future of personalisation. In her detailed analysis of core policy documents, spanning across a change in government, Carr skilfully highlights the contradictory nature of broader welfare reforms and its impact on implementation despite cross-party support for this agenda. Part two of the book invites the reader to explore some of the key challenges to personalisation which unsurprisingly include safeguarding and the need to avoid perceiving only a dichotomous relationship between the two. Likewise, the controversies around older people and personalisation are revisited as Llyod poses some important questions concerning capacity both in terms of resources and demographics, but also around the preventative potential of personalisation. Henwood's chapter highlights the growing interest and literature around self-funders and personalisation which until recently has been largely absent from the discourse around social care. This chapter provides a most informative account of legal and policy changes around self-funders as a result of the 2014 Care Act. Henwood highlights the importance of independent advice, information and assessment for self-funders who have social care, stressing that purchasing power alone does not guarantee choice and control in securing support.

Government (linguistics) · Narrative · Personalization · Political science · Public relations · Safeguarding · Sociology · Space (punctuation) · World Wide Web · Computer Science · Healthcare innovation and challenges · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving · Medicine