Client thoughts on Personalisation

Community Insight recently hosted a discussion with its peer consultants at B.HUG’s office in Harlesden, to find out what they thought of the future of supported housing and changes taking place in the sector. One of the discussion points was Personalisation, the provision within support services for clients to directly control a portion of the money spent on their support and spend it as they see fit (within certain limits). Those taking part in the discussion had some strong views on Personalisation and in particular what they would need, and want, to know if and when they were picking a service provider to spend their budget on:

“It is really, really important that the service user finds out what the provider can do because their money is allotted for a year, so if they use that up in the first six months, how are they going to manage for the next six months. So that information has to be out there, in black and white, clear, so the service user can use it and to be able to gain from that service what actually they want.”

“You might want to know what each provider is best good at, because they have their own specialist things.”

“You need to know what their performance is like.”

“I would want to know the price of the service, the cost, so I can choose.”

“I would want to know if there is continuation of the service after the initial period that you booked the service for or will there be pathways on.”

“Availability of the support is important, in terms of the distance support workers would have to travel to come and give you support. If every two days she’s going to say ‘I can’t come next week’, it’s going to be very difficult.”