Introduction

This chapter focuses on the idea and practice of person-centred support. This is the central focus of this book and indeed of contemporary social care policy. There is little agreement or clarity over terminology in this field, which is one which abounds with jargon. The dominant term used to describe proposed new developments in and beyond social care, as we have indicated, is ‘personalisation’. It originates in a government Green Paper of 2005 (DH, 2005). Yet in a very short time, from being a new piece of jargon, it has come to be offered by government as the guiding principle for the future of social care and indeed of other public policies (HM Government, 2007). It has had cross-party support and survived government change to remain a focus for social care policy (Putting People First, 2011). At its heart personalisation seems to be used to mean tailoring the service or support to the individual citizen or service user. While, as we have said, its definition remains vague and unclear, in social care it appears to serve as a synonym for person-centred support. It is this latter term that we will mainly be using in this book although we see the two terms as having significantly shared meanings. In this chapter we will look at the origins of the idea and practice of ‘person-centred support’, but focus particularly on the meanings that service users, practitioners and managers now seem to attach to it.