Care Services Minister Norman Lamb has written to all Directors of Adult Social Services (DASS') to encourage them to sign up to Making it Real to mark their progress with personalisation and use POET to check the results of personal budgets.

POET, the Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool, has been developed by In Control and Lancaster University to help councils to assess their performance locally and nationally by surveying local personal budget holders and carers about the outcomes they are experiencing. Councils can then use the data gathered to focus their delivery plans in areas that are attuned to local experience and where improvements will have most effect.

More than 80 organisations across adult social care, health and children's services are already signed up to POET and the national data set now includes the experiences of almost 8,000 people.

Making it Real was developed by people using care and support services, carers and family members to set out what personalisation looks and feels like when it is working well. It's a tool to help bring together their perspectives alongside those who commission services and those who provide them to identify top priorities for change and to plan together how to make those changes happen.

Around half of local authorities have currently signed up to Making it Real, with providers of services being the bulk of the 700 other organisations registered with the project.

Both commitments to Making it Real and POET were made in Think Local Act Personal's (TLAP) Personalisation Action Plan published in March. Writing at the time for the TLAP Personalisation: What's Next campaign, Norman Lamb said:

"... I have been impressed by the ways some councils, and many other organisations across the sector, have used Making it Real to build strong momentum for personalisation locally, and I want this to be a universal experience. Secondly, the Personalisation summit emphasised for me how important it is to focus on the outcomes from personal budgets, not just the numbers. Are people getting better lives and support and is the experience simpler and more flexible? This should be checked with people and families directly. One way of doing this is to use the Personal Budgets Outcomes Evaluation Tool (POET). I am really pleased to say that over the next year all councils who wish to use this tool will be able to do so and I would encourage all to do so."

Further information on POET and details of how adult social care departments can now access the tool for free can be found on our POET webpages

Information on Norman Lambs communication with DASS can also be found on the TLAP website.