Making it Personal - A report on self directed care for social service recipients

This report, written by Demos, a UK think tank, advocates a simple yet transformational approach to public services – self-directed services – which allocate people budgets so they can shape, with the advice of professionals, the support and services they need.

"Personal budgets and self-directed services mobilise the intelligence of thousands of people to get better outcomes for themselves and more value for public money..."

This participative approach delivers personalised, lasting solutions to people's needs at lower cost than traditional, inflexible and top-down approaches, by mobilising the intelligence of thousands of service users to devise better solutions.

The self-directed services revolution, which began in social care with young disabled adults designing and commissioning their own packages of support, could transform public services used by millions of people, with budgets worth tens of billions of pounds. From older people to ex-offenders, maternity to youth services, mental health to long-term health conditions, self-directed services enable people to create solutions that work for them and as a result deliver better value for money for the taxpayer.

Self-directed services can be taken to scale safely while minimising fraud and risk. They can also be good for equity because they empower those people who are the least confident and able to get what they want from the current system. Self-directed services give people a real voice in shaping the service they want and the money to back it up. Previous approaches to public service reform have reorganised and rationalised public services. Self-directed services transform them.

Authors
Charles Leadbeater is a Demos Associate, author of We-Think and a visiting fellow at the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts. Jamie Bartlett and Niamh Gallagher are researchers at Demos.

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http://www.demos.co.uk