This New Economics Foundation report  is about innovations which unlock communities’ strengths and recognising that people with support needs can also be assets to their communities. It outlines seven principles for empowerment and inclusion for an age of austerity.

1. Community development needs to start from how people themselves define their situation, the challenges they face and their aspirations and assets.
2. Communities are stronger where people who use services are helped to find good ways of making a valued local contribution, not just seen as in need of care.
3. Most support is delivered by families and social networks: it is critical that services support and work in partnership with people who make unpaid contributions.
4. The personalisation of public services marks a genuine change when it represents a change in culture, aspirations and the availability of a wider choice of support providers, not just a change in funding mechanisms.
5. To live fully, we all need to be able to make informed choices, to take risks and to experience the consequences of our choices.
6. Public sector contributions are more cost-effective when they look across the pattern of local assets and needs, not just at those assessed as ‘most needy’.
7. Micro-scale enterprises and interventions can be a powerful vehicle for mobilising new contributions and enabling people to co-design and share ownership in services which are personalised to their needs.