The breadth of reforms described in Chapter 3 convey the extent to which personalisation has been established as a new orthodoxy in public services, influencing change across a range of sectors, albeit in different ways. A central puzzle to explain, therefore, is how personalisation came to hold such a dominant position. This chapter explores the ways in which argumentation is used within the personalisation narrative, as part of understanding how it has established such a pre-eminent role. It is an examination of the internal logics of the narrative, and the role of ideas in shaping policy change. The chapter focuses on social care where the personalisation narrative has been most fully articulated, with its compelling story of improvement for care service users providing the rationale for personalising other sectors.

The first part of the chapter aims to distil the key features of the personalisation narrative from an examination of the claims made in documents, speeches and interviews that are supportive of personalisation. It examines how the personalisation narrative deploys the various tools of storytelling – involving the reader, and telling a simple, purposive story with powerful emotional content. The second part of the chapter discusses how the narrative engages with time, discrediting past approaches to delivering services, but engaging in an ambivalent relationship with change and continuity.

Little is said in this chapter about the agents and interests that have promoted the personalisation narrative and the broader political culture within which it has flourished. Those aspects of policy change are the focus of Chapter 5. The chapter also says little about critical readings of the narrative from practitioners and commentators who contest and problematise its storylines. These alternative readings are discussed in Chapters 7 and 8.

Distilling the narrative

A great deal has been written on personalisation, explaining what it is, why it is important and what its likely impacts will be. Much of this has emerged from the social innovation network In Control, which played a key role in developing personalisation in social care, and from Simon Duffy, one of the founders of In Control (for details of publications, see www.in-control.org.uk and www.centreforwelfarereform.org).