Abstract

Within the context of personalised care services in England, this article focuses on the extent to which the financial control associated with having an individualised budget contributes to key aspects of citizenship such as personal efficacy and inclusion. Noting the limitations of existing evaluative studies on personal budgets and direct payments, the article examines how the introduction of individualised financial control might be expected to shape people's attitudes and behaviour. In particular it interrogates the care relevance of two principles which have been established by a wide range of experiments in behavioural economics: that spending money on things changes our attitudes towards those things; and that citizens are bad at making decisions which are complex and have long-term consequences. The article explores the distinctive attributes of care that act as important intervening variables in understanding how these claims play out.