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Supporting Personalisation: The Challenges in Translating the Expectations of National Policy into Developments in Local Services and Their Underpinning Information Systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2014

Penelope Hill
Penelope Hill*
Affiliation:
Mortimore Hill Associates, Churcham, Gloucestershire E-mail: p.hill@mortimorehill.co.uk
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Abstract

Social care policy is actively promoting integrated and personalised care. Local organisations are starting to re-engineer their business processes, review front line practice, develop new operational tools and revise their information systems to support and deliver these new approaches. This article draws on a study undertaken in one local organisation as it began to implement its response to these expectations. It uses structuration theory to explore how the macro agendas described by policy and legislation are translated into local perspectives and then further refracted through the lens of operational practice, shaping the business tools which deliver the change. The evidence suggests that there needs to be a better understanding of how the expectations of policy are interpreted – and potentially distorted – through their translation into local practice, and of the role that information and information services play in enabling, or disabling the delivery of those expectations at the front line.

Keywords

Social caresocial care informaticspolicy implementationpersonalisationstructuration
Type
Themed Section on Hiding in plain sight or Disappearing in the rear view mirror?: Whatever happened to the revolution in information for Health and Social Care – Learning from England and Australia
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , October 2014 , pp. 593 - 607
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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