Taming the beast

Personalising public services is a tricky beast to tame, not least when you’re working in the criminal justice or substance misuse fields which are typically the forgotten limbs of public services.

Personalising public services is a tricky beast to tame, not least when you’re working in the criminal justice or substance misuse fields which are typically the forgotten limbs of public services.

For many, the very suggestion of enhancing choice and empowering the users of these services is incomprehensible yet their effectiveness depends on it.  As the promise of spending cuts materialises, it is only by ensuring this effectiveness that will guarantee the safety, health and success of individuals and communities.

What does this look like in practice?

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For the service users: The RSA User Centred Drug Services Project has been working with drug and alcohol users in Bognor Regis and Crawley to find out how we might co-design user centred [personalised] services that better meet their needs.  The project has helped these often marginalised individuals to find their voice and to make them heard.  It has fundamentally changed how some of these individuals see their role in their treatment, empowering them to seek a more active part in their recovery and in supporting others in theirs.

For the service providers: Existing power relationships are being turned on their head, unnerving many of the practitioners working on the ground.  Fundamental changes to working cultures, practices and attitudes are slowly but surely permeating as the providers and the users find their way simultaneously.

Other fields such as social care are further along their personalisation journey than in the criminal justice or substance misuse fields and offer opportunities for learning.  Much of the research has been around one element of personalisation which is yet to be fully explored by the RSA’s project; Individual Budgets.  Based on a market approach with a greater level of choice, individual budgets may be a step too far in this financial climate. After all, as Dr Simon Griffiths points out, choice requires excess capacity; something that is sorely missing as we slowly climb out of recession.

I wonder. Can ‘personalisation’ be considered truly successful without individual budgets and without unrestricted choice?

Follow the RSA User Centred Drug Services Project at http://rsaroutemapstorecovery.ning.com