The main difference between "user-controlled personal assistance" and other services is that the management of the arrangement is the user’s responsibility. The first attempts with personal assistance in Norway began in 1991, and the scheme has been authorized in the Social Services Act since 2000. The number of users has increased steadily in the period after the enactment of this legislation from ca. 700 in 2000 to more than 2200 in 2010. Personal
assistance has from the start been dominated by persons with mobility problems. From 2006, the target group was extended to people who can not attend management responsibility. Other persons can attend this role together with or on behalf of the users. The basis for the report is data from two representative surveys of personal assistance users in 2002 and 2010. The purpose is to capture the empirical trends of the arrangement from the users’ point of view.
The survey shows that many features of personal assistance are stable. The user satisfaction is still very high. Nevertheless, there have also been changes in key areas. It has been a greater heterogeneity among the users, and there has been a polarization with respect to who takes
care of the management of the arrangement. The user control does not seem weakened, but beside the user relatives / guardian increasingly take care of the management responsibility.
There have also been an increasing number of users with a few hours personal assistance. At the same time more users have personal assistance as their sole service. More users than in 2002 report insecurity about various aspects of the scheme, particularly among the "new"
users. Qualitative studies are necessary to get more reliable knowledge about the causes of the changes
