When you meet someone who works in social care who ‘gets it’, it gives you hope that the future is going to be better for people who draw on care and support. Jim Thomas ‘got it’.
My earliest memory of Jim takes me back to when I joined Skills for Care’s working group on Personal Assistants (PAs). I was used to going to meetings and having to argue my corner about how Direct Payments should work and how PAs are not the same as care workers. I was over the moon to meet Jim as someone who understood and stuck up for the values of person-centred support, people directing their own lives and being part of their local community in meaningful ways.
Jim seemed to me to be a modest man. He didn’t have an inflated opinion of himself and worked steadily to do what he believed to be the right thing. I don’t know, but I guess he’d be taken aback at the countless tributes that have come flooding in now that he has, so sadly, left us.
I wanted to write this blog simply to draw attention to a piece of work that Jim and I did together, along with Cat Duncan-Rees and Jo Hough from Curators of Change. Not all work is enjoyable, but this was! We worked really well together and were proud of what we co-produced, with thoughts and contributions from dozens of people. All the way through, Jim kept saying that he wanted it to be useful and used – by anyone interested in the people who work in our social care and health world.
Making it happen together: what good care and support looks like is a framework of I, We and Together statements that describe what it feels like to work in social care and health when you have a great employer; and it sets out how organisations, leaders and managers can create the best workforce environment and culture.
This workforce tool was inspired by Think Local Act Personal’s Making It Real and, together, the two documents have the potential to really make a difference to how people experience working in care and health and how those of us who draw on care and support can live our best lives.
So, a big thanks to Jim. Please take a look at this work and spread the word so that his legacy lives on.
