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BackgroundThis paper questions consumerist assumptions in current English social care policy and aims to look behind the processes of personalization to interrogate what 'choice and control' means in the lives of a diverse group of people with intellectual disabilities.MethodsData were from multiple interviews and direct practice recordings with nine people using personal budgets and were analysed using an interpretative approach.ResultsIdentity, other people and personal budget processes were all important for choice and control. People needed to build confidence in themselves as decision‐makers, both through peer support and through joint decisions with trusted others.ConclusionsPractitioners need to take into account the spectrum of ways in which people may make decisions. Action needs to be taken both at the micro level of support interactions and at the macro level, with a clearer articulation of independent living in policy and strategy for people with intellectual disabilities.

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the key role played by a specialist Parents with Learning Disabilities team in supporting parents with learning disabilities who are involved with child protection services. This team is recognized as working through three levels of relationships to enable parents to engage firstly with this service and then with services concerned with the welfare of their children. The team also promotes positive multi‐agency relationships. The service is praised, by parents, for its respectful, trusting yet honest and challenging relationships and was also respected and trusted by child protection workers, who are sure of the team's commitment to the welfare of the children and who see them as central to the support that is provided to parents with learning disabilities. Parents who have previously had children removed are engaged with children's services and being supported to parent by this service which is living out the principles of positive support for this group of parents discussed in the Good Practice Guidance on Working with Parents with Learning Disabilities (Department of Health and Department for Education and Skills) and Finding the Right Support (2006).

Summary The social care assessment is a 'key interaction' between a person and the local authority with 'critical' importance for determining a person's needs for care and support. In order to achieve this, the guidance requires that assessments must be 'person-centred throughout'. The concept of person-centred practice is now routinely invoked, but there remains little empirical evidence on how it gets put into practice. Findings This paper draws on interview data from 30 practitioners about their experiences of conducting social care assessments in England. While there was widespread support for the principles of a person-centred approach, tensions emerged for practitioners in three ways: the way in which 'chat' was used to build a relationship or conduct the assessment, whether to conduct the assessment via a conversation or by following the sections on the agency form and the extent to which the assessor should involve and negotiate the contributions of family members. Applications We argue that each of these dilemmas represents an occasion when a commitment to person-centred practice is negotiated between professionals and service users and sometimes compromised as a result. We consider the possibilities for and constraints on achieving person-centred assessments in a post-Care Act environment and discuss the implications for social work practice and research.

Taking Laurel Richardson's concept of a 'take three words' workshop onto the social media site Twitter with its discipline of quick 140 character answers to the question 'What are you doing now?' proved to be a surprisingly intimate insight into the everyday sociology of the lives of 12 writers living in 21st century Britain.

Jane Speedy was leading the community of scholars in the "open space" session for March 2014 in Room 407. The Narrative Inquiry Centre held an "open space" session every month on the fourth floor of the Graduate School of Education. In "open space" sessions, one scholar led with exemplars of work that was troubling them/that they were troubling, after which others contributed their thoughts/comments and writing. Jane Speedy's recent stroke had reduced/distilled/extended her writing into fragments. Her colleagues followed/responded with fragments of their own and thus this text was collaboratively written, in real time, on March 3, 2014.

Bringing together academics, artists, practitioners and 'community activists', this book explores the possibilities for, and tensions of, social justice work under the contemporary drive for community-orientated 'impact' in the academy. Threading a line between celebratory accounts of institutionalised community engagement, self-professed 'radical' scholarship for social change and critical accounts of the governmentalisation of community, the book makes an original contribution to all three fields of scholarship. Showcasing experimental research and co-production practices taking place in the UK, Australia, Sweden and Canada and within universities, independent research organisations and internationally prestigious museums and galleries, the book considers what research impact could look like for a wide range of audiences and how universities could engage with different publics in ways that would be relevant and useful, but may not necessarily be easily measurable. Asking hard questions of the current impact agenda, the book offers an insight into emerging routes towards co-production for social justice