Blogs and articles

Kate Sibthorp is a member of the National Co-Production Advisory Group. Her daughter lives at home, supported by her parents and a small team of personal assistants.

As a working carer of fifty years, I warmly welcome the long awaited Carers Action Plan 2018-2020 and its recognition that ‘it makes good business sense to consider what flexible working practices might help both the employer and the employee’.

Is co-production different to what we might do on a typical day in our busy lives? Catriona Duncan-Rees tells us about one of hers and how co-production is not a 'pilot' or a 'project'!

I recently had the pleasure of talking with a group of people working in Health and Social Care in Wigan who are really trying to transform the offer of social care support in the town. They want to use Individual Service Funds (ISF’s) to help make this happen.

Escaping the invisible asylum authored by Shared Lives CEO Alex Fox has been praised as a positive contribution to the thinking around health and social care.

A long-delayed green paper on the future of social care challenges us to rethink what we mean by a ‘care market’.

Being a person who uses social care myself, I know how it feels to be on the receiving end.

Over the last few years, we’ve shared colleague’s frustrating experiences of witnessing stalling initiatives, and professionals’ desires to maintain their role in “fixing” people.

We talk a lot about the importance of people who need care and support having choice and control over how that support is provided.

Martin Routledge blogs about new support to make Circles available to anyone who wants one, including free DIY materials and support for people and groups.

When you think about co-production, do you ever think about the space you do it in and how it affects what you are saying? Continuing the theme of constructive conversations which Adam Webb began with his blog last week, Catriona Duncan-Rees now considers space and the impact it has on co-productive conversations.

In the summer of 2016 the doors finally opened. After 8 years, the Chorley Moor and Gillibrand Estates, located in Chorley, finally had a neighbourhood hub – Buttermere Community Centre.

Last week I got an email from a colleague. ‘It’s happening. The group is going it alone! They don’t want me to go anymore! No more arguing with my director about why I’m involved! It’s been seven years!’

A key feature and focus of Think Local Act Personal’s current work is to understand better the gap between the rhetoric of personalisation policy and the reality of personalised care and support that people who use services experience.

One of the key ideas I have been promoting this year through my work with the Care Markets and Quality Forum is ‘constructive conversations’. But what is a constructive conversation?

Words matter. Not a new thought, but it has to be said again and again. The words we choose can make something clear, or make it mysterious. They can help people understand, or confuse them more than ever. Words can invite the reader or listener ‘in’, or they can keep them ‘out’.

My name is Sally Percival, I co-chair The National Co-production Advisory Group and The Think Local Act Personal Partnership, but more importantly I care for my son Alex and my mother Audree both of whom have a personal budget that I manage.

The TLAP Partnership exists to support transformation through personalisation and community centred approaches. Several times a year we meet to identify sector-wide priorities and develop solutions to tackling and overcoming barriers.

To coincide with Learning Disability Week 2017 and NHS England’s conference, Sue Turner sets out some of the learning from three sites who have been implementing Personal Health Budgets (PHBs) for children and young people with complex needs.

As a veteran working carer of over 50 years, I warmly welcome TLAP’s and ADASS’s joint initiative to put carers firmly on employers’ agendas and future work plans.