The impact of personalisation on people from Chinese backgrounds: qualitative accounts of social care experience

Abstract

The limited research that considers people from black and minority ethnic communities' experiences of personalisation tends to focus on personal budgets rather than personalisation per se. This article provides an opportunity to hear the voices of people from Chinese backgrounds and their experiences of personalisation. The study used individual semi‐structured interviews and focus groups to collect data from physically disabled people from Chinese backgrounds who lived in England, were aged between 18 and 70, and received social care. Data were analysed using an iterative and thematic approach, with early analysis informing the subsequent analytical rounds. The findings reveal that personalisation has the potential to transform the lives of people from Chinese backgrounds, especially when tailored support is available for people to understand and access personal budgets and put them to creative use. However, the impact of personalisation is barely evident because few eligible individuals access personal budgets or participate in co‐production. This is related to a lack of encouragement for service users to become genuine partners in understanding, designing, commissioning and accessing a diverse range of social care services to meet their cultural and social care needs.

Co-production in health policy and management: a comprehensive bibliometric review

“…Social care mainly refers to the coproduction and personalisation of community health and the delivery of well-being services [88]. The focus is above all on the weakest segments of the community or on integration difficulties [89,90]. Confirming the evidence on collaboration among authors, "public health" is one of the most explored fields, both in terms of the co-production of knowledge [91,92] and service design and/or delivery [93,94].…”

Engaging citizens living in vulnerable circumstances in research: a narrative review using a systematic search

“…church, CBO, school or playground, or the street, using culturally sensitive pamphlets [ 41 , 65 , 68 , 75 , 82 ] Make use of local news on TV or radio [ 17 , 23 , 25 , 30 , 63 , 68 , 71 , 75 ] Build on the capacities and knowledge and empower those involved by offering easily accessible activities [ 47 , 25 , 48 , 51 ] Storyboards [ 59 , 60 , 67 ] Digital storytelling [ 48 , 68 ] Photo-voice methodology [ 2 ] Theatre-related activities [ 25 , 47 ] Unstructured dialogue with creative components [ 47 , 57 , 65 , 75 ] Invite people to a familiar location [ 40 , 47 , 58 , 72 ] Plan the meeting at a location that participants prefer [ 23 , 27 , 30 , 39 , 41 , 61 , 63 , 68 , 72 , 79 , 84 ], most often identified as a familiar place, such as a café-style environment, a church, a community centre, or their own...…”

“…Cultural differences between researchers and participants [4,7,30,39,47,52,57,60,63,65,82] Involve a same-cultural researcher [4,20,23,41,42,54,60,63,65,71,82] Train same-cultural researchers (e.g. peers or students) [17,20,23,54,57,60,63,65,66,79,82] Involve community members, i.e.…”

“…First, many studies highlight the need for recruitment in familiar locations and/or via a familiar recruiter to mobilize citizens who are unfamiliar with research. Word-of-mouth recruitment is most often [7,65,79,84], bicultural researchers [54,60,71,84], or someone from the network of the researcher [51,68,84] Use snowball recruitment [41,49,51,75] Recruit at a place that people are familiar with [2,4,17,23,27,43,51,71], e.g. church, CBO, school or playground, or the street, using culturally sensitive pamphlets [41,65,68,75,82] Make use of local news on TV or radio [17,23,25,30,63,68,71,75] Build on the capacities and knowledge and empower those involved by offering easily accessible activities [47,25,48,51] Storyboards [59,60,67] Digital storytelling [48,68] Photo-voice methodology…”

“…To address this concern, one strategy is mentioned: make sure the funding body agrees on the methodology and timeline to avoid tokenistic research. Make sure the funding body agrees on methodology [43,60] -Community partners have different priorities [7,17,25,44,54,82] Build trust with community partners [63,65,82] Undertake 'shoe-leather' research [63,65] Be transparent about the goals, values, and principles of the research [54,63] Make time to clarify expectations [54,63] Avoid regular changes of research staff [54,43,82] Create a mutual interest [47] Be transparent about the resources involved [7,27] Host cost-neutral activities [27,43,48,54,65] Remunerate staff or volunteers of CBOs for their efforts [7,27] Be transparent about the resources involved [7,27] Collect data within the context of already planned activities [54,63] -Unbalanced power dynamics in interactions [3,7,25,30,41,43,47,49,51,…”