Cast your mind back to 2020. A few months into the Covid-19 pandemic was the first time many of us had experienced entering the supermarket (after queuing outside) to find the shelves empty, particularly the toilet roll aisle! Flour and baking products were also at an all-time low and I was scrabbling around across various local shops to find the bits I needed to make a cake.
This once in a generation experience brought to life a metaphor we have long been using at Community Catalysts – that the money in your pocket isn’t very useful if there is nothing available to buy. It’s the same with Direct Payments. They have immense potential to give people more control over how they live their lives, but people also need a choice of things to spend the money on and be allowed to do so.
When we formed Community Catalysts, in response to Putting People First way back in 2006, we knew we had the expertise to build on that choice through community micro-enterprises, and that’s what we’ve continued to do. Even so, 20 years later, ‘personalisation’ is sadly still not the reality it should be for many people. So, here are three key things that need to change to bring us closer to real choice and control:
- Stock the shelves. Leaders need to develop the market, thinking pragmatically about the choices they are offering for local people. If the main items on the menu are care homes, home care agencies and day centres then it is time to be bolder and braver and consider how to develop a wider range of high-quality support options.
- Think local and be creative. There is a wealth of amazing, wonderful work happening in every corner of every neighbourhood in the country. This can take a variety of forms from informal faith groups, community cafes, allotments, theatres, charities, walking groups, gyms, pubs… you name it! You just need to look with open eyes, walk the streets and see the potential of these groups and places to enable people to live connected lives in their areas. With a bit of help to become inclusive and accessible, this varied VCFSE sector can offer real support, connection and choice for people. By considering these groups as options for people to spend their Direct Payments on, we open up a much larger world of choice – and the income generated through people’s Direct Payments can help these community initiatives to thrive, too.
- Give people freedom and show what’s possible. Restrictive processes, procedures and limitations on what Direct Payments can be used for have become more and more common in the two decades since we formed. And if we only talk about Direct Payments in a way that is synonymous with employing a Personal Assistant – which isn’t attractive to all – then the power of having the funds to help people live their lives how they want is taken away.
We know these changes don’t come overnight, but real personalisation is possible if there is the strategic buy-in to do something different, to change commissioning strategies and to bring people and operational staff on the journey. We have supported many local authorities to make huge steps towards bringing personalisation to life for local citizens in so many ways. Some useful starting points include:
- Completing a ‘diagnostic’ with the local authority to understand where they are on their journey to personalisation. For example, reviewing together Direct Payment processes and the systems and culture of teams in bringing them to life, and reviewing the current approach to building market capacity.
- Getting to grips with the realities of working with community micro-enterprises. We are so pleased that the development of micro-markets is happening up and down the country without us. In some areas, individual project staff struggle to develop an approach to quality and don’t understand the complex world of regulation around, for example, CQC or HMRC. We have the knowledge and tools via our “Doing It Right Standards” to get things moving immediately.
- Making sure that local people know what’s available locally. There are lots of ways that this can be done. At Community Catalysts, we’ve built a directory of care and support services called Small Good Stuff, which provides lots of great features for both operational staff and local citizens.
Over the past 20 years we have had the privilege of supporting over 90 councils to build capacity locally via this model of care. Our typical model is a two-year contract where we employ a local Catalyst and work in partnership with the council, VCFSE and local people to bring choice to life. And it works! If you’d like to know more, you can read an article or watch a video about our work to support the creative use of Direct Payments in Hertfordshire.
Community micro-enterprises bring real variety to what is on offer… and this, after all, is the spice of life! Along with TLAP we will continue to show what is possible when choice is developed and Direct Payments are front and centre. Because – as we all learned back in 2020 – real choice only happens when the shelves are fully stocked.
You can hear Helen talking about this topic in the recording of our webinar, ‘Direct Payments… but there’s nothing to buy!’ in our Resource Library. Learn more about Community Catalysts at communitycatalysts.co.uk.
