This presentation was given at the joint think tank on welfare reform by The Centre for Welfare Reform and the Health Service Management Centre. It describes the underlying logic of personalisation and the wider impact it may have on the whole welfare state.

1. From Personalisation to Welfare Reform?
HSMC Think Tank, June 2010
© Simon Duffy. Rights Reserved. The author must be cited if images or slides are used

2. Understandable scepticism...
• Welfare reform will never happen
• Welfare reform isn’t really necessary
• Personalisation is proving hard
enough
• Welfare reform is just a cover for
‘Tory cuts’
• Personalisation is just a ‘social care’
issue

3. Opportunities for optimism
1. Social justice theory
2. Health care
3. Skills and education
4. Total Place
5. Tax-benefit reform

4. 1. Social Justice Theory
• Personalisation was inspired by visions and
values outside mainstream political theory
• Provides a capabilities approach that takes
us beyond a limited focus on money - real
wealth
• Provides a non-meritocratic and inclusive
vision of social change - equal citizenship
• Offers principle of equity - sufficient for
citizenship

7. The goal is citizenship

9. Assumptions or Explorations
1. What if people could make better decisions?
2. What if people could respond better to
problems?
3. What if people could have positive
incentives?
4. What if people could face less complexity?
5. What if people could take more

10. Real wealth is the resource

13. this means real poverty is
1. Despair - having no hope
2. Loneliness - having no friends or
family
3. Exclusion - never being part of
anything
4. Worthlessness - not believing in
yourself
5. Powerlessness - having no control

14. Equity principles
• A fair society is one where all its members
treat each other with respect, that is, as
equal citizens.
• A fair society ensures that the grounds for
respect (the keys to citizenship) are so
designed inclusively - so that everyone can
achieve citizenship, and thus be respected
as an equal.
• A fair society organises itself so that

15. Focus Shifting from... ...towards
Utility
Equal citizenship
Purpose maximisation
Ending poverty
economic growth
Income inequality
Capabilities
Resources Equal
Sufficiency
opportunities
Community
Process control
Process development
Regulation
Innovation & leadership

16. 2. Individual Budgets & Social Care
• Incoherence of social care will only become
clearer as individual budgets increase
• The interesting boundary is between areas
where individual budget doesn’t work
• Individual budgets for care would extend
deeply into the NHS e.g £20 billion on
mental health
• Distinct means-testing for social care will
come under greater scrutiny

17. Personalisation Model

18. new rules and flexibilities

19. new forms of funding

20. personalisation will work for
people
• needing support in the community
• managing long-term health
conditions
• trying to rebuild their mental
health
• wanting to die at home
• wanting more personalised
education
• trying to find work
• wanting to avoid prison

21. 3. Skills and education
• What is at the heart of learning and
personal development?
• What are the other 26 pupils paying
for?
• Schools as social networks for
organising learning
• Home school networks
• Nationalise private education

24. 4. Local government & civil
society
• As needs become more complex so does
the complexity of the response
• Service professions, departments,
organisational boundaries lead to
‘privileged irresponsibility’
• The state struggles to recognise and
support civil society responses

29. success is dependent upon
• ability to spot and support
innovation
• celebrate and own civil society
responses
• radically disinvest from current
blocks
• shifting authority and control to

30. 5. Tax-Benefit Reform
• Means-testing in social care - bizarre
double-taxation for the most vulnerable
• 100 different benefits and benefit rates
• The uncertain boundary between an
individual budget and a benefit
• The hidden innovation of personalisation -
the simplifying RAS

34. Conclusion: Change?
• Resistance is inevitable
• Timescales are uncertain
• Intentional organisation is required
• Success will be a ‘constitutional’ shift
in power and control to citizens,
families & communities

38. strategies
• smallness provokes less resistance
• powerful ideas can create powerful
communities
• testing and evidence matter
• implementation

39. Contact Details
Simon Duffy
Centre for Welfare Reform
The Quadrant,
99 Parkway Avenue, Parkway Business Park
Sheffield, S9 4WG
T +44 114 251 1790
M +44 7729 7729 41
admin@centreforwelfarereform.org
www.centreforwelfarereform.org