Norman Lamb, the Care Minister, gave an interesting interview in the Telegraph over the Christmas period, which was given the rather unfortunate headline, “Neglectful Britons blamed for forcing elderly into care homes”.
I’ve never accepted an invitation to speak at an event abroad during my time with Shared Lives. The opportunity to learn something completely new is tempting, not to mention the chance of seeing another country, but usually the bill would fall upon Shared Lives Plus and the cost plus the time can seem hard to [...]
Tris Brown, our communications and media guru, guest blogs from a session exploring how digital creativity and design thinking could come together with people with social care related problems to solve. Ever wondered what would happen if the world of geekdom met up with the world of adult social care? I accept this is not [...]
I chaired two lively fringe meetings at the Lib Dems and Conservative party conferences at the invitation of the ResPublica think tank. Both discussed the relationship between choice and making social care personal. Most people at these discussions were positive about the principle of being able to make choices about services. One attendee pointed out [...]
This year’s Shared Lives Plus conference was co-chaired by Paul Croft, who lives in a Shared Lives household and Richard Jones, a Director of Adult Services and one of our trustees. This is what Paul told the conference – he has kindly given me permission to re-print it here: “Good morning ladies and gentlemen. I [...]
It’s Shared Lives week this week, with local events at 152 Shared Lives schemes across the country to celebrate the incredible achievements of Shared Lives carers and the people who live with or visit them in their family homes. The week started with our sold-out England conference and 20th Birthday celebrations, which led me to [...]
For the policy-minded folk out there, here is our response to the consultation which closes on Friday 28th about developing Joint Strategic Needs Assessments and Joint Health and Wellbeing Strategies (email JSNAandJHWS@dh.gsi.gov.uk to respond). For the non-policy interested, our key point is that, when they are planning, councils need to start looking for the hidden assets (eg community groups) within their areas, not just at what people’s needs are.
Eight promising social ventures, including Shared Lives are sharing in a £1m government funding boost: http://t.co/NDvFjDJ3 We are working with Community Catalysts, Social Finance and Royal Society of Arts to model and scope a social impact bond to accelerate Shared Lives development, as part of our aim to quadruple our sector and reach thousands more [...]
That opening ceremony and the triumphs of Jessica, Mo, Bradley et al are already fading, but whilst I remain sceptical about the economic or sporting legacy of the games, surely the real legacy will come from the Paralympics (or Power Olympics as my friends’ five year old thinks they’re called), which have leapt out of the shadow of their bigger budget cousin and brought us more positive images of disabled people in a few days than most of us see in the media in a lifetime.
BBC Radio Four’s Women’s Hour featured Lisa, a parent with a learning disability and her Shared Lives carer, Dawn, from Shared Lives South West. The article was followed by a debate about the issues. Lisa is parenting her daughter successfully and now needs relatively low levels of support: raising the question of why Shared Lives [...]
Nathan , 37, who works in Derby City Council’s employment team to support people with learning disabilities and James 33, a bank worker, are part of the council’s Shared Lives scheme. The couple, who married in 2006, support Debs and Dave, who live with them as well as another lady who comes to their house [...]
Community Care has been running an interesting survey on what workers and people who use services think the latter should be referred to as. Andy McNicoll’s interesting blog about it is here. A third of workers in social care think that “client” is best, with “service user” coming in a close second. “Person” and “person who uses [...]
I was in an interesting discussion last week at Think Local, Act Personal’s Community Capacity network. Representatives from several local authorities were comparing notes on their attempts to devolve decision-making power to groups of local people. Their approaches varied but some common points emerged: the issue of who takes responsibility for the group was crucial, [...]
I was at a Dept Health briefing on the new Care and Support Bill today, which set out a useful overview of the story the Bill was trying to tell about the new social care system. The Bill starts with an overarching principle, which is that the purpose of social care is to promote well-being, [...]
So we have a White Paper on social care at last. Whilst those of us who have been involved in ongoing discussions about its content have done so under pain-of-death conditions of secrecy, most of the key announcements have, of course, already been leaked – sorry, trailed – by Ministers themselves. So there are few [...]
At the back of the social care White Paper is a note on how the vision will be implemented. Two new committees are announced: a transformation group, which sounds like it will be quite broad in membership, and a transformation board, which will be for representatives of those bodies with a responsibility to deliver the [...]
Today’s social care White Paper highlights our members’ Shared Lives and micro-enterprise work as ways in which the social care system can move from a crisis-only service, to one which is preventative and focuses on people’s well-being and how connected they are with those around them. It also notes that Shared Lives can help people [...]
My blog on taking an assets-based approach to healthcare reform, particularly where public health and other behaviour changes are required, is on PublicService.co.uk here: http://bit.ly/LJRVab Simply improving the way we commission existing health services will not achieve what society really requires, says Alex Fox, chief executive of Shared Lives Plus. He argues for a more [...]
Here’s a third and final blog off the back of this week’s King’s Fund discussion about innovation in healthcare. I’ve argued on a number of occasions that we have focused too much on trying to adjust demand within social care -by giving people personal budgets and Direct Payments with which they could, in theory, demand [...]
Here’s another reflection arising from this week’s King’s Fund discussion about innovation in healthcare – they must have had good coffee. Whenever we talk about innovation, ther e is a tendency for us to be talking about innovative interventions and projects – shiny new ways of doing a task, or shiny new bits of kit. [...]
Dr. Bill Thomas is an international expert on elderhood and geriatric medicine. He is the founder of the Eden Alternative and Green House Project, a writer and musician. Follow Dr. Bill on Twitter and Facebook.
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