Today I visited Debbie Brown, Coaching Consultant at Barnet Council to find out how they are incorporating strengths based approaches into assessments and changing the council’s work so that practitioners can take this approach.
Personalisation does not happen when policies are created or when social workers are allocated or when assessments and reviews are completed. Personalisation happens on a human level – when one person takes the time and trouble to really pay attention to another person, when a person listens without interrupting and opens a space of discovery.
Dorset County Council recently held a successful launch to celebrate a new commitment to a person centred approach to delivering adult and community services.
Two weeks into my new role with Think Local Act Personal (TLAP), I'm learning quickly just how the organisation takes hold of difficult issues and brings the social care sector together to unpick them and move forward.
We applied for a direct payment as soon as we could and the change has been massive. By choosing and employing our own staff we are able to keep consistency and reliability in Alexander's support.
Building community capacity network member Claudia Gold shares her experience of working for The Conservation Volunteers on the award winning initiative, Green Gym. Recognising the value and impact of this programme, Nesta and the Cabinet Office are supporting its development across the country.
This is first to let you know that we have just updated the strategy tool with some more helpful resources on Information and Advice, that have become available over the last few months. There clearly continues to be live interest in this aspect of Care Act Implementation - and some valuable pilot work is going on at national, regional and local levels.
The landscape of care and support is changing rapidly, however the digital changes that we have seen while accessing care and support have not been as radical or as timely as other sectors. Care and support apps in many ways seem a bit underdeveloped and somewhat behind their mainstream and commercial counterparts.
In many ways it was a shock to be asked to be the first person who has experience of accessing services to open the National Children and Adult Services Conference 2015 (NCASC). Who could ever have imagined that that anyone would want to listen to little old me? I have gone from the asylum, to addressing many of our local leaders.
The Care Act (2014) expects councils to develop local markets that are as diverse as their local populations and offer choice to all. In the 'People not Process: Co-production in commissioning' guidance produced by TLAP in 2015 we showed how people were getting valuable support from 'non-traditional providers'.
World Mental Health Day is a funny old day for me. I am mindful and remember that mental health doesn't really cover the full spectrum of mental ill-health, which makes me think that in a way it is funny that it is named "Mental Health Day". When you consider that one in four people will be affected by a mental health challenge and/or distress at some point in their lives, why is it that no one seems to be talking about mental ill-health and wellbeing?
I have blogged previously about the strange contradiction between what everyone says they want to see Mental Health services become, and what actually happens in practice. Everyone, without exception, wants Mental Health services to be more flexible, less prescriptive and more person-centred.
The University of Hertfordshire have been co-producing the design of the new Continuing Professional Development (CPD) degree modules, resulting in courses with citizenship in mind.
TLAP's Information and Advice Strategy Toolkit was tested by several local authorities in a series of regional workshops and we will shortly be updating it with fresh resources based on their feedback. Following on from this work, these pilot sites are now well underway to producing their strategies.
The Care Act cites Making it Real as a measure for personalising social care services; and we know from our own evaluation that councils that are at the 'Action Plan' stage of Making it Real have a higher proportion of people with self-directed support.