With a season ticket for Rochdale FC, some air conditioning and grace-and-favour curries, the personalisation agenda was hailed as ‘the new way forward for social care’. Such was the excitement of its champions, the enthusiasm of the Department of Health and even the acquiescence of one or two disability organisations close to the ear of the government, that it felt impolite, if not downright obstructive, to raise any questions and concerns about the agenda.

Therefore, when the London Direct Payments Forum (since rebranded the London Self-Directed Support Forum) called a conference raising concerns, we were met with some criticism. In Control, a driving force behind personalisation, chose not to attend, and some other enthusiasts came reluctantly when the sheer breadth of the speakers made it impossible to avoid.

The conference (‘If we’re going to do it – do it right’) involved a wide variety of speakers, including some of the most enthusiastic proponents of personalisation and some of its most sceptical critics. One of the key speakers was Peter Beresford. His insightful and critical articles in The Guardian and elsewhere may not have been warmly welcomed by some forums but for a conference such as ours, his involvement was a must.

The point of the conference was neither to rubbish nor laud the proposals, but to guard against doing the thing badly. Those of us who had worked around direct payments for years were keen to avoid the mistakes of the past, where due to the random way in which the schemes were introduced into the different areas, some fine practice in some places contrasted with the most shameful practices in others. We had seen just how long it had taken the worst to get anywhere near the best.

From the beginning, there were concerns. From the point of view of those of us that had worked around direct payment support, there was real concern that that support appeared to be largely written out of the new process, the implication being that family members would/should provide what is often highly specialised and very time-consuming support. Furthermore, the oft-mentioned innovations cited at the beginning of this piece, while good, were highly specific initiatives, dangerous to generalise from and, as with most pilots, resourced in ways that were often unlikely to be met in general practice.