The government is committed to rolling out personal budgets across all of social care in the next 3 years. The scale of the transformation is enormous.

Personalization will turn care provision on its head, because individuals will receive their own budgets and commission their own services – with the potential to buy things that bear no resemblance to what the local authority commissions.

This means great uncertainty for the organizations that provide social care because the demand for services is going to change dramatically. But providers do not know what users will want, or how they should diversify their business processes in response.  At the same time, local authorities will not be able to plan for the transition without knowing what supply is out there, what individuals can get for their money, and where and how they need to continue commissioning.

We are working on a major piece of market intelligence work which will help providers to make the transition successfully, and help local authorities forge a better partnership with providers. 

We are carrying out market research in 4 local authority areas (Cheshire, Hull, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire) with current and potential service users to provide in-depth, locally relevant market intelligence to identify the key trends, threats, fears, and opportunities.

We will conclude this work with 3-4 large workshops hosted by Demos, in partnership with local authorities that have been involved in the project.  The aim is to share our findings, and to work together to construct a meaningful direction for partnership between local authorities and service providers.

This project is supported by Grove Investment, and will run until July 2009. For more information contact Jamie Bartlett.