Alan Urquhart, Community Capacity Building Manager for Perth & Kinross Council, focuses on community capacity building and speaks of the need to build the confidence of local people to work together to get the services they need. He provides an interesting example of partnership working between the local community in Aberfeldy and the council regarding use of the town hall.

Suzie Burt from Perth and Kinross Council speaks about the improvements to their services and the challenges that the council will face in the future. She highlights the need to improve outcomes for service users, as well as the need for the council to measure performance in order to produce evidence that quality services are being provided.

Brigid Daniel speaks of the need for more strategic partnerships with councils, focusing on the areas of developing research for practice, practice exchange and CPD.

Jean Bush gives an insight into what personalisation is in practice, and provides an example of practice from her own experience.

Dr Iain Ferguson, Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Stirling, talks about how various user groups have different expectations of services, and as the number of service users grow, whether support can be sustained.

Professor Kirstein Rummery, Chair of Social Policy at the University of Stirling, compares the differences between regulated, state-supported personalisation schemes, such as those offered in France, the Netherlands and the UK, with much more unregulated and unstructured schemes available in countries such as Austria and Italy. Rummery also speaks about outcomes, and how more formal, state-supported schemes usually mean better services and outcomes for both workers and users.

A seminar and workshop organised by the Perth and Kinross Partnership / University of Stirling Partnership to examine policy and practice in personalisation and community capacity. Interview with Karl Stern, Learning and Organisational Development Manager at Perth and Kinross Council, on the development of partnerships to improve the link between social work practice and research/academia. Focusing specifically on the partnership between Perth and Kinross Council and Stirling University, Stern speaks about three key areas of development: research, CPD and practice exchange.