City Research Online

Abstract

Within Europe the Norwegian and English welfare states represent two different welfare regimes. Due to common demographic challenges of an aging population as well as grassroots pressures, particularly from disabled people, significant changes in the delivery of longterm-care services for older and disabled people have taken place. This article focuses on the change towards personalisation policies encouraging people’s greater choice and control in regard to their care services and uses the case of ‘cash-for-care’, which gives people an allocation of funding to meet their needs, to discuss conditions and implications of personalisation policies within different contexts. Based on a theoretical framework exploring a democratic and a market discourse of personalisation policies the article provides a comparative analysis of the Norwegian and English cash-for-care schemes. While a crucial common change in the public sector’s role towards at arm’s length long-term-care services occurred, significant differences remain: while English residents are given greater choice and control from the beginning of the allocation of cash-for-care they also face more insecure circumstances due to the simultaneously stimulated care provider market. The Norwegian case, however, shows a possibility of increasing choice and control without a large diversity in a care provider market.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	The final publication is available from Journal of Social Policy at Cambridge Journals via http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047279414000257.
Publisher Keywords:	Personalisation, choice, control, long-term-care, cash-for-care, Norway, England
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare
Departments:	School of Health & Psychological Sciences
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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