The discussion so far has established the value of narrative approaches to policy analysis, and highlighted some of the prima facie ambiguities of personalisation as a narrative of reform. Attention now turns to some of the reforms that have been undertaken in its name. Through identifying key policy commitments and common themes it is possible to draw out some of the distinctive elements of personalised approaches to public services. This chapter gives a sector-by-sector account of how personalisation has impacted on public services to date.

There are at least two challenges to this type of overview. First, a snapshot of reforms always overstates the simplicity and coherence of a set of reforms and risks being quickly outdated. Reforms are ongoing and the change of government in 2010 makes for a more volatile policy environment. However, it appears that the Conservative–Liberal Democrat government is not abandoning any of the personalisation reforms discussed here, since they fit with their own approach to service restructuring (HM Government, 2010a). If anything, the Cameron-led government looks set to take the personalisation agenda further and faster than New Labour, a point developed in the concluding chapter. Other sources of potential instability in describing personalisation reforms – the disputed genealogy of the reforms, the contested evidence base, the variable implementation – merit further discussion and are key themes of later chapters.

There is also an issue of boundaries: what to include and not include as an example of personalisation. Some of the people interviewed for the research described personalisation as a new word for an approach that they had always taken, with which government was now catching up. There are various initiatives going on outside the state sector that could be described as examples of personalisation (see eg some of the projects run by Participle [Cottam, 2009]). However, the discussion here encompasses service tailoring that has been promoted or endorsed by government, consistent with the focus on personalisation as a narrative of policy change.

Within government-sponsored approaches, it is still a challenge to identify what counts as an example of personalisation, since the word itself may not always be used.