A vision worth striving for

Clenton Farquharson, TLAP co-Chair and member of the National Co-production Advisory Group shares his vision for Personalisation: what's next?:

" I believe that TLAP's vision is still worth striving for. It's about improving people's lives and I think everyone would sign up to that.

For me, one of the most positive things about TLAP is the involvement of people who use services, disabled people, older people and carers through the National Co-production Advisory Group (NCAG). NCAG is a strong voice within TLAP. We have seats on the TLAP board with Marjory and myself as Chairs of the Partnership, and we are conduits for the group. NCAG members can talk to us about issues, challenges and solutions and we raise these at the TLAP board. NCAG also offers an opportunity to hear from seldom-heard voices. People use the term hard to reach groups. I have done a lot of work with so called "harder to reach" groups, and they disagree about the term. They say, "We're here, it's not that we're harder to reach it's how you engage with us so our voices can be heard."

NCAG members and myself met to discuss our vision for the future of personalisation and TLAP's priorities. Primarily we agreed that TLAP needs to remain grounded around people. It should be about people, our aspirations, our hopes and TLAP should not lose focus; if things are changing for the better in some places then we should welcome that but we know there is a long way to go."