Social workers’ verdict on how well councils are equipping them to deliver personal budgets in the age of austerity.
Not very well…according to the survey results published by Community Care in their annual report The state of personalisation 2013. Please read this report to see some alarming statistics: 84% of social workers agree that service users’ choice and control has been reduced in the last two years; 75% think the resource allocation systems are difficult for service users to understand; just 2% reported that service users and their families actually take the lead in support planning. And there is plenty more to digest…
Community Care published a special feature to accompany the report entitled ‘Expert guide to direct payments, personal budgets and individual budgets’. This is actually a highly informative guide to the whole topic of personalisation, mainly ‘factual’ and with links to other useful resources; and recommended to any ‘service user’ or carer who is sometimes baffled by the phraseology (jargon) used by social workers.