Personal budgets, co-ops and health and social care

What is it about?

There is growing contemporary interest in how enterprises based on co-operative values can help to meet needs relating to welfare, and re-energise public services. The objective of this article is to examine critically the intersection of personalised adult social care services and the co-operative tradition, which emphasises mutual aid and value-led enterprise. We do this by retelling the story of personalisation through a co-operative lens, and ground this reading in case studies of two new co-operative enterprises that were supported under a Department of Health programme in England (2006 – 2009) intended to demonstrate how personalised adult social care could be extended by developing collaborative, co-operative organisational forms.

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Why is it important?

This is the first article that considers the role of co-operatives and how they deliver health and social care services within the personalisation of health and social care.

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