Alex Fox, Shared Lives Plus
What’s All This Talk of Assets About?
One of the recommendations which received the warmest welcome from the UK government was the idea that we have to move from a ‘deficit’ to an ‘asset’ based view of people. It’s unfortunate that those are horribly jargonistic terms which need some explanation, and which are open to misinterpretation.
Countdown to the White paper
Despite stories in the press about delays to the White Paper, as far as we can tell, it remains on track for publishing in ‘the Spring’. ‘Spring’ in civil service speak lasts well into June, of course. We’ve got a fair idea of what’s going to be in it, because the government involved lots of [...]
Bashing and boosting micro-enterprise
We launched a new report today on the top ten ways in which councils are boosting – and bashing – micro-enterprises in their area. Whilst some areas limit ways of spending personal budgets or access to ‘approved provider’ lists to tried and tested large providers, others actively encourage creativity and have thought through the environment [...]
Independence means….’walk’
Registered Shared Lives carer, Sheila and her family have recently started to support Paul, who is 50 this month. Sheila has helped Paul to get a bus pass, to learn to use public transport via Birmingham’s ‘Community Options’ scheme and about road safety, so that he can make use of the community for the first time in [...]
Developing Shared Lives holidays and breaks
We are really pleased that we have been awarded Department of Health funding to develop a way of offering Shared Lives as holidays and breaks to people across local authority boundaries, in different areas of the country. There are Shared Lives carers who can provide short breaks living in seaside towns, national parks and in [...]
Local Area Coordination
How can we kick start radical change in a care and support system which is suddenly starved of money? Perhaps an equally valid question is, “How can we not?” This second question can only be asked if we genuinely believe that there are ways for communities to face their challenges which aren’t entirely reliant upon services. [...]
Shared Lives in Harrow
During the Queen’s recent visit to Harrow she was presented with a book of photographs of inspirational people in the borough, including Robert Ward, who has learning difficulties and is part of Harrow Council’s Shared Lives scheme. Mr Ward, who will celebrate his 50th birthday in May with a visit from his parents from New [...]
A place to call home
Shared Lives like lots of services is under pressure to cut costs. We like to tell people about the (sometimes huge) savings that Shared Lives can make through helping someone to live in an ordinary family household, rather than in an expensive and often restrictive service. But we have to be careful to say also [...]
Homeshare in the Guardian
There’s an extensive feature about Homeshare in the Guardian magazine today. http://goo.gl/725rj Here’s an excerpt: War veteran Marjory decided after one meeting to share her house with Heather, a nursing student. Heather gives 10 hours’ help a week, cooking three or four times and doing light cleaning. They have been homesharing since 2010. Ground rules: [...]
Ditch ‘prevention’!
This is the last blog in a series inspired by a seminar with social care leaders which looked at the question of citizen and community-led change. It became clear early on in the discussion that some people had arrived expecting a debate about ‘social capital’ and community development, whilst others had been expecting a debate [...]
Taking gambles that pay off
This is the third blog I’m writing off the back of a seminar with social care leaders which looked at the question of citizen and community-led change. One of the debates we had on the day was the age old debate of whether change is all about changing systems, legislation and funding routes, or all [...]
An exclusive club no one wants to join
In my last entry, I reflected on some of the questions I was involved in debating at a seminar for senior social care colleagues who are all trying to embed ideas of community and citizen leadership into their local area. I suggested that there is no one way of achieving this, but a number of [...]
Five questions with one answer.
On Friday, a group of senior leaders from council social services departments got together with colleagues from the Department of Health team writing the social care White Paper due later in the Spring. Sue Bott from Disability Rights UK and I did our best to keep order in a passionate debate about how to tackle [...]
New radicals?
This weekend, the nice people at NESTA included Shared Lives in an article you can read online (http://www.nesta.org.uk/news_and_features/britains_new_radicals/alex_fox_shared_lives) and a mention in the Observer, under the heading ‘Britain’s New Radicals’. Shared Lives as a new form of radicalism is interesting. Whilst Shared Lives Plus was founded in the 1990s, Shared Lives isn’t a very new form of radicalism: it’s been [...]
User-Led Organisations: Endangered Species?
I do my best to remain optimistic during these too-frequently grim times. One of the determining factors of what the sector achieves on much diminished resources, will be what we continued to believe was possible. Our public finances perhaps haven’t been this bad since about 1948. But in that year our grandparents looked around at [...]
Three Questions About Closing Day Centers
The closure of day centres – and other ‘building-based’ services – continues apace. I subscribe to a popular email group run by the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities (http://www.choiceforum.org) and there has been a spate of messages recently from family carers and professionals raising concerns about this. There’s even a report of an area opening up a new day centre for people with complex needs, having closed the old one and decided that alternatives weren’t working.
Are Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) the Next Small Thing (NST)
I sometimes think we need a name for those ideas which, whilst they are not necessarily nonsense, get blown up on rather shaky evidence, into the next big thing. They are usually ideas that: have a cool-sounding, or failing that mystifying name, usually reduced to an acronym apparently have the potential to solve a dizzying [...]
Joining up health and social care?
There’s been lots of discussion of the Nuffield and King’s Fund report on integrating health and social care, which came out this week. Two personal thoughts on integration of health and social care: one is the view of Richard Jones, one of the most effective social services directors (and our newest Trustee), who says something [...]
Is ending loneliness a preventative service?
My latest Caring for our Future blog is about loneliness and what you should measure when you measure ‘prevention’: savings or outcomes such as reduced isolation:
http://www.campaigntoendloneliness.org.uk/guest-blogger/caring-for-our-future…
No prevention without integration?
One of the pleasures of being involved in the White Paper engagement exercise, Caring for our Future, is that very clever and experienced people send you interesting and insightful thoughts and evidence. The challenge is reading it all. I’m co-leading the reference group looking at the issue of Prevention: what is it; how can we [...]
