Blogs and articles

Caroline Speirs, Head of Think Local Act Personal, blogs about shifting power and unlocking traditional mind sets with Making it Real.

Former Care Minister Norman Lamb MP, supporter of TLAP and advocate for Making it Real discusses his frustrations with the social care system and why the Making it Real framework can support meaningful change.

As mum to a young woman with learning disabilities and autism, Kate’s been thinking about how Making it Real could inspire personal assistants and support staff to help people like her daughter achieve their New Year’s resolutions.

The Making it Real I statement, “I know what my rights are and can get information and advice on all the options for my health, care and housing” applies to carers and also to the people we care for. It is matched by the We statement, “We make sure people know their legal rights and responsibilities”.

Chris Jeffery, a person with lived experience and campaigner for paid carer's leave at Mending the Gap, offers his hopes for the Green paper and a practical solution that employers adopt Making it Real. 

For many the experience of being interviewed to check for eligibility for a personal independence payment can be demoralising and disempowering. Pamela Holmes, consultant and novelist recounts her friend's experience.

Personalised care is an increasing priority for the delivery of NHS services, to ensure people have more choice and control over the way their care is planned and delivered.

Do you worry about who’s going to love your children when you’re gone? I do. And so do other parents who have sons and daughters who need support.

Recently I have been giving some thought to technology. This is not my natural state, as people who know me will testify, as I am a self-diagnosed ‘late adopter’.

Hi everyone me and Vicky are both Leading on Self Advocate in the Wirral.

Co-production – it’s about professionals and people with lived experience making decisions together, right?

Laura Bell from National Voices tells us about the role of the voluntary sector in delivering Personal Health Budgets and offers valuable tips for collaborative working with CCGs.

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.