Personal Budgets, Choice and Health – a review of international evidence from 11 OECD countries: A Review of International Evidence from 11 OECD Countries

Personal or individual budgets for purchasing health and social care are intended to offer more choice, control and flexibility to service users when compared with agency-directed care. They are becoming an increasingly common feature in high-income countries for purchasing personal care that often lies on the border line between health and social care. In England, they have recently been introduced explicitly for the purchasing of health care. There are some key motivations behind their introduction: they are expected to give individuals more choice about care they receive; to expand options for care; to improve outcomes; and to reduce expenditure. This paper draws from a review of the international evidence on personal budgets which identified: descriptive detail on personal budget schemes in 11 OECD countries to examine their key features and implementation processes; empirical evidence on the experiences of, and outcomes for, people using these schemes, and; empirical evidence regarding the impact of the schemes on the healthcare system, particularly with regards to resources. The paper examines the motivating factors behind personal budget schemes in light of this evidence. It concludes that there is little in the evidence to suggest that international governments’ expectations for personal budget programmes are well-founded. The assumptions that they improve choice, and that more choice will in turn lead to greater autonomy and then improved outcomes at lower cost, are actually far more complex and generally unsupported by evidence

Reflections on the impact of social technologies on lecturers in a pathway institution

Education has evolved over time from face-to-face teaching to computer-supported learning, and now to even more sophisticated electronic tools. In particular, social technologies are being used to supple- ment the classroom experience and to ensure that students are becoming increasingly engaged in ways that appeal to them. No matter how educationally beneficial, however, new technology is affected by its users. To investigate this, lecturers at the Eynesbury Institute of Business and Technology (EIBT)—a Higher Education pathway provider—were surveyed to determine their perception and application of social technolog(ies) in their personal, but predominantly ‘professional’ lives. Utilising a qualitative and autoethnographic approach, one author provides an insight into their own attitude toward social technologies, coupled with responses to three open-ended questions. Thereafter, the same questions were posed to EIBT academic staff to understand their willingness or reluctance to use social technologies in their practice as part of their first-year pathway course(s)