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The paper's aim is to explain the development of the concept of personalisation and its dependence upon prior innovations such as independent living, person‐centred planning and individual budgets and explore its meaning, limitations and future prospects.

The paper takes the form of an analytical and historical review of ideas that have been important in the recent history of public policy for people with learning disabilities.

People with learning disabilities, along with other disabled people, have been engaged in a struggle to achieve full citizenship. The recent reforms that go by the name of “personalisation” may mark an important stage in the development of a fairer system, but on their own they will be insufficient to achieve that objective.

Personalisation is placed, with all its strengths and limitations, within the wider context of the development of policies for people with learning disabilities.

This paper gives a brief overview of the background to current efforts to help more people with learning disabilities take up direct payments. It reflects on some of the challenges involved for stakeholders, and describes the positive steps that many partnership board areas are beginning to take.

This collection of stories captures the lives of people whose lives have changed as a consequence of the policy to close long‐stay hospitals. Not everyone lived in a long‐stay hospital, but those who haven't probably would have if they were still around. They give a snapshot of the impact of probably the most important public policy in the UK to affect people with learning difficulties over the last 40 years.

Since 1948 the Health Service has been a subject of policy on which Labour has consistently rated higher than the Tories in public opinion. But the standard of care within the National Health Service is seen as falling. What difference will the new plan make? There are undoubted good intentions, but also the potential for confusion as commissioning and service delivery are put in the structural mixer once again.

Personalised Transition demonstrates how a collaborative approach to funding individual budgets for disabled school leavers with complex needs in Sheffield has led to more positive, individualised outcomes for the young people and their families. The approach allows young people and their families to be in control of support planning and organising their lives beyond school with a mix of funding from health, social care and education according to individual needs. The focus is on the young person as a citizen with a contribution to make ‐ not as a service user. The model is already being used in five other local authority regions in Yorkshire and the Humber. The implications of the model go far wider ‐ to further reforms in adult social care, health care, education, children and families, and community development.

Care management is a central part of the current health and social care system, but the development of Self‐Directed Support raises significant questions about the future of this function. Moreover, if the current design of the care management function is to change, then this will raise significant challenges and opportunities for those professionals who currently act as care managers. These changes may even allow social workers to return to a way of working that fits better with their professional ethos.

This article outlines the idea of an individual budget, which is now being promoted and tested by central government. It defines the idea, and describes the practical and policy consequences that may flow from its implementation. It also sets out some of the policy choices that will necessarily emerge from these developments. This article follows on from the earlier article in JIC (February 2005), which was the first article ever published on the subject.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a hypothesis about the core elements of an effective transition process in a system of self-directed support and to suggest that the approach to integration in public services may need to radically change.

This a reflective piece, drawing on decades of practical work by the authors, combined with an understanding of the literature and the social policy context.

Typical solutions to the problem of transition focus on system change instead of ensuring that power and control shifts to families and young people. A change in starting point opens up more empowering and practical solutions for the real world.

This paper goes deeper than others on the same subject by moving beyond the outcomes and issues, to suggest some lessons for social policy makers, professionals and citizens.

This paper seeks to provide an overview of recent reforms to the social care system in England.

The reforms are described and contextualised within a broader account of the history of social care that includes an analysis of the factors that have encouraged reform.

The current reforms of social care will bring about some benefits but their long‐term impact is still very uncertain. The changing political and economic environment and the inherent difficulties that reform suggests indicate that these changes will be subject to significant differences in interpretation for some time.

This analysis is framed by a set of ethical assumptions about the rights of disabled people and the injustice of arrangements that limit those rights.

The paper encourages practitioners to treat new ideas such as individual budgets and self‐directed support as positive opportunities for improving practice, while being mindful of tensions and unresolved issues that may harm good practice.

This research should help policy‐makers and the general public to avoid misunderstanding the role of these innovations and to better understand when and how these reforms can be used positively.

This paper offers a new and historical perspective on the social care reforms from someone who is closely associated with inventing and implementing those ideas.