Drawing on interviews conducted by the author with politicians, bureaucrats and citizens, alongside content analysis of government documents, the book explains how New Labour has consumerized public services and contributed to the anti-politics that it previously decried.

This volume brings together for the first time a substantial group of advocates and critics of the personalization agenda in English social services in order to debate key issues and attempt to find common ground. Practitioners, service users, and academics offer differing perspectives on the practicalities and controversies associated with the implementation of personalized approaches, which the book s conclusion then examines in order to attempt to make sense of the divergent accounts and find a value-based approach to personalized care that all sides could agree on."