Personalised Support

Showing service providers how to transform their current services to offer highly flexible and creative supports - to people with the most complex and challenging needs.

Release | 15.08.10

The Centre for Welfare Reform, with support from the Department of Health, has published a new report setting out a model of Personalised Support.

First developed in Scotland in 1996, Personalised Support, was the inspiration for individual Budgets and Self-Directed Support. However this is the first time the model has been fully documented. The book describes the work of one service provider, Partners for Inclusion, who have been one of the leading organisations providing Personalised Support.

The model shows how service providers can:

This model is highly relevant to the 27,000 services currently offering support in adult social care and children’s services. It is also important that commissioners and people with individual budgets know that these options exist.

Voices

Jim Mansell, Director and Professor of the Applied Psychology of Learning Disability University of Kent, and author of the report’s foreword, says:

“The account presented here illustrates two overarching principles of organisation in Partners for Inclusion. First, everything is referenced to and judged against its impact on the quality of life of the people the organisation supports; this means not only the way staff work, but how human resources, housing, finance and monitoring are carried out and how the organisation is designed. Instead of expecting people to fit in to arrangements designed for administrative ease, the organisation does its best to design arrangements around the people it supports. Second, there is a high level of attention to the detail of how people want to be supported. Instead of leaving staff to work things out for themselves, risking inconsistency and ineffectiveness, Partners for Inclusion pays attention to thinking through what each person needs and to continually adapting and refining the support provided.

Julia Fitzpatrick, author of the report says:

“People with the most complex and challenging needs are too often being offered institutional and segregated service provision. It is important commissioners and service provider realise that there is no need for this, that we can support everyone within the community.”

Simon Duffy, editor and Director of The Centre for Welfare Reform, says:

“It was while developing Personalised Support in Scotland that we first learned the benefit of setting the budget at the beginning of the planning process stimulating creativity and personalisation. The Centre for Welfare Reform is proud to publish a full account of this model.”

The Report: Personalised Support

Author: Simon Duffy

Publisher: The Centre for Welfare Reform

Publication date: August 2010

Available at: 

www.centreforwelfarereform.org

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