Making it Real launched today

Making it Real: Marking Progress with Personalisation and Community-based Support is today being launched at the Community Care 2012 conference. The campaign encourages organisations that pay for, or provide, social care services to get real about improving people's lives. We are asking social care organisations to go online to publicly declare their commitment to changing the way older and disabled adults experience care and support.

Written by older and disabled people and family carers themselves, and supported by a major coalition of the social care sector's leading organisations, Making it Real sets out what people expect to see and experience if they are using truly personalised care and support that provides more choice, control and freedom to live as independently as possible. These are then matched against the key elements that need to be in a place in an organisation to make these experiences possible.

Social care organisations are encouraged to sign up online to declare support for these "markers of progress on personalisation" and start working with the people who use their services to change care and support for the better.

The goal is to encourage organisations to be more transparent in the way they develop and deliver their services; ensure true "co-production" takes place so disabled and older people have a greater say in how their support is delivered; and to provide a means for organisations to demonstrate accountability to their users.