Gearing up for personalisation: training activities commissioned in the English pilot individual budget sites

The transformation of social care in England is taking place though changes affording greater choice and control for people using services. Individual budgets were one key element of these changes and were piloted in 13 local authorities in 2006-2008. This article reports on interviews with training leads in these local authorities that took place in 2008 as part of an independent evaluation of the individual budget pilots. The aims of the interviews were to explore the role of training as part of the processes of transformation, the use of resources and establishment of training strategies within the local authority. Participants revealed that the subject of training was acquiring higher profile within their authorities, although uncertainties remain about the extent of local authority responsibilities for training. Within local authorities, training resources were yet to be determined and models of training were not fully developed. The article concludes that training will remain a central issue when implementing personalised social care services and that models of training for such changes should be shared and evaluated over the long term.