We must end the bureaucracy around personal budgets

Making resource allocation systems more simple and transparent is critical to the success of personalisation, say Martin Routledge and John Waters of (TLAP/ In Control).

A few weeks ago at Community Care Live, I (Martin) did a light-hearted mind-reading trick with my audience of mainly adult social workers. I asked them whether they felt personal budgets were benefiting the people they supported and asked them to divide themselves into pessimists, optimists and those in the middle. I then asked people questions about why they had placed themselves in each group before showing some slides about delivery challenges and possibilities that largely replicated their comments. This suggests to me that we now have a pretty consistent understanding of what is working and what needs fixing with personal budgets.