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Here’s an unusual proposition; I’d far rather the staff at Dimensions are able to listen to someone like Anne-Marie*, someone we support in her 50s who features in our new book about personalisation, than they listen to me, their chief executive.

This reflects the message at the heart of the book, Making it Personal for Everyone, revealing how important the person-centred approach is going to be for people who work for Dimensions in the future. The book, co-authored with Helen Sanderson, will be launched today at the National Children’s and Adult Care Conference at the International Convention Centre at London’s ExCel centre.

Our organisation, a national provider for people with learning disabilities and autism, has been on a journey to transform its services in recent years. Personalisation aims to give people a greater say in how their services are run and a bigger role in their delivery. While we have long supported this vision and the ambition towards personal budgets for everyone by 2013, making it a reality will create fundamental challenges for those operating traditional care services (residential care home or group living).

Somewhat reluctantly, Dimensions has come to accept the harsh reality that in the current economic climate, we are not going to be able to close our care homes and support people in their own home with a co-designed, more independent support package. So how can you deliver personalisation in traditional care settings? How can providers of traditional services ensure they’re supporting people flexibly while giving them maximum choice and control?

We began answering these questions in our initial publication, Making It Personal, released last year. That first title described the root and branch changes needed in our organisation to offer services for people with personal budgets. Now, Making It Personal for Everyone explains what happened when we broke down block contracts into Individual Service Funds at a traditional residential care home so people could be supported to control their own “budget”, activities, choice of support staff and staff rotas.

We wanted to ask how you change how a traditional service works and how it is organised, what system changes need to be so people can in effect have money and make choices over what they do when they do it and who supports them.

We don't suggest our book is a magic answer to one of the biggest questions facing providers today, nor does it offer a one-size fits all approach. It does, however, explore the major changes that we may need to make if providers and their staff are to work towards personalisation, and it offers one way forward through the use of Individual Service Funds. There are a lot of good organisations out there with strong values, trying to do the right thing for those they support, but not everyone knows about their work. If sharing what we have done helps other providers think about how they can support their users, then that's a great outcome.

The book describes how, over eight months, we piloted our new approach in a “typical” service, Old Street*, a traditional six-bed care home for people with learning disabilities staffed by 16 people. The book charts our progress through Anne-Marie’s outcomes and also takes into account the perspectives of Becky, who works there, and Carolynn, the manager. It describes how the new person-centred approach enables people to enjoy a life of their choosing, within budget, while increasing the chances of people connecting with local communities. Critically, it provides a clear and honest account of lessons learnt and tips for other providers taking a similar journey for finance, human resources, rota planning, management and working practices.

How is our book different to existing resources that are available? Firstly, there are a lot of practical tools in it. As Helen says: “The person-centred thinking tools highlighted in this book are ways to think with people about what a great week looks like, how to match staff to people based on interests and characteristics, and make it work through a personalised rota.” Secondly, we have written it in plain English and we hope readers will agree it is an accessible, jargon-free read, like its predecessor. Finally, we have been very upfront about what was difficult about the process and what we've learnt from it.

For example, organisations doing this sort of work need courage and conviction, and the book is honest about that. As my co-author Helen says, it can be like shining a light into the darkest corners of your organisation.

Changing the working culture, for example, is a challenge when moving towards personalisation. You’re effectively asking someone who has been employed as a shift worker to radically alter their way of working to be more flexible. Or you could have a situation, as we did, where the new approach enables individuals to choose their support staff for particular activities, and some people are more popular than others. In fact, at Old Street, the member of staff concerned raised her game to demonstrate to the people we support that she had as much to offer as her colleagues.

Another issue is trying to follow a choice and control agenda when it seems to fly in the fact of traditional, risk-averse thinking. Two of Anne-Marie's wishes were that she wanted a job and a pet dog. We wanted to support her aims but we also had to help her understand the realities of owning a pet. We combined her two aims and helped her find a job walking a dog, earning money doing something she loves.

You also have to be bold in using what we describe in the book as “just enough support”; because over-supporting can risk undermining someone's confidence. As MacIntyre managing director and VODG chairman Bill Mumford says of the concept of “just enough support”, it is “both brave and challenging, but vital in unlocking existing barriers to maximising personal choice and control”.

Another key issue in the book is how to make the money stack up. We came up with the figures by testing the Care Funding Calculator and the Resource Allocation System.

Let’s go back to Anne-Marie. At the outset at Old Street, Anne-Marie's wishes were to be with her dad, join groups, socialise and work. At the start of the eight-month process, she seemed very far away from her dreams and aspirations; she was always supported by a member of the team whenever she left the house and had a very limited range of pastimes and activities. Now her life is very different. She has twice as much contact with her father – fortnightly as opposed to monthly – enjoys her dog-walking job, goes to dance and swimming classes. She is more connected with the community and volunteers at a local church coffee morning.

Personalisation, for me, is about choice and control and a shift of power. But beyond that it's about the people we support. As Old Street team manager Carolynn simply puts it “the best thing about the journey is to see the people we support enjoy life, really connecting with their community and achieving so much and enjoying it”.

* Names have been changed
* Making it Personal for Everyone will be launched at the National Children’s and Adult Care Conference in London today at 5pm, stand E21a. Delegates can receive a free copy of the book at the exhibition.