Personalisation and partnership: competing objectives in English adult social care? The Individual Budget Pilot Projects and the NHS

As in other countries, improving collaboration between health and social care services is a long-established objective of English social policy. A more recent priority has been the personalisation of social care for adults and older people through the introduction of individualised funding arrangements. Individual budgets (IBs) were piloted in 13 English local authorities from 2005 to 2007, but they explicitly excluded NHS resources and services. This article draws on interviews with lead officers responsible for implementing IBs. It shows how the contexts of local collaboration created problems for the implementation of the personalisation pilots, jeopardised inter-sectoral relationships and threatened some of the collaborative arrangements that had developed over the previous decade. Personal budgets for some health services have subsequently also been piloted. These will need to build upon the experiences of the social care IB pilots, so that policy objectives of personalisation do not undermine previous collaborative achievements.