Personalisation in disability services and healthcare: A critical comparative analysis

Personalisation is a key term in contemporary British social policy. This paper conceptualises personalisation as embodying two aspects – marketisation and social justice – and explores their interaction in discourses and practices of personalisation in disability services and healthcare. Comparing the application and reception of personalisation in these two social policy domains, the paper identifies a tendency of marketisation to override social justice and highlights the negative implications of this tendency. The analysis is further contextualised by looking at the uses of personalisation to legitimise retrenchment of public provision in the context of post-2008 austerity. In conclusion, the paper calls for a critical engagement with the dominant interpretations of personalisation in order to prevent its reduction to a vehicle for unchecked marketisation of social policy.