What is Personalisation?
Personalisation is intended to give adult services users a greater say in the care and support services they receive.
It is meant to offer choice, taking into account a person’s preferences and aspirations and putting them right at the heart of the process of planning their care.
One of the ways that personalisation has been introduced is through the introduction of Personal Budgets (individual budgets) for people who use social care services. This means that they will be able to purchase the services or care that is most suitable to their needs.
It is intended to address shortcomings in the traditional service-led approach that has sometimes led to people not receiving the right help at the right time, leading to a feeling of disempowerment.
To succeed in offering a better, more tailored service in which people have a real say in shaping the kind of support they receive Personalisation is dependent on people having access to the right information, advice and advocacy. It is also dependent on the availability of choice between real people centred services. We believe the voluntary and community sector will be central to making this work.
What's happening locally?
The Council’s adult social care policy agenda is focused on the development of personalisation of support. The voluntary sector is seen as a key partner alongside statutory agencies in shaping the market and delivering services to meet the needs of new and existing residents in Kensington and Chelsea.
Personalisation support from the Social Council
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea currently provides funding to the Social Council to help build the capacity of voluntary and community organisations to deliver this agenda. Part of this capacity building work is focusing on supporting organisations to develop income generating activities or to become a social enterprise. Please get in touch with us if you would like to find out more about what we can offer.
Our policy work continues to follow the current changes taking place within the tri-borough developments and the merger of adult social care services with Hammersmith and Fulham. This will see a combined adult social care unit form which will commission services alongside GP’s when they take over commissioning responsibility.
Personalisation will fall under the shared NHS and Local Authority functions, whilst local authority led joint commissioning will include areas such as day services and homecare.