Resource Allocation System or RAS is something devised by a social worker called Simon Duffy who managed with very little evidence to convinced an Labour government over 7 years ago to implement it nationally as personal budgets. It is a way of assessing what people need by providing them with a cash entitlement first which they to plan their support or that was the idea. It was sold as something amazing where people can be creative and money would flow.

I can only saw RAS working in the closure of day services where it is cheaper and more creative to give the users the money to spend as they wish. But in terms of personal care and support, I am afraid there is often little room for creativity and what people need is what people need. RAS uses a tick box form, insultingly called a self assessment, to create what has become an increasingly become a computerised mystery. Many authorities realised quickly that RAS was not working, calling what was an entitlement into an indicative budget which could be customised to reflect what people actually need, making the process pointless.

RAS has become disliked and even hated by service users and professionals alike as a mysterious cost cutting measure that has disempowered a generation of service users and I knew what the start it was a bad idea.

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