A new study for the first time reports what service users want for future social care and how they think it can be achieved. Findings are presented from a national consultation event jointly organised by Brunel University and the Commission for Social Care Inspection. Shaping Our Lives supported the involvement of service users and the event was also supported by 18 major social care organisations, bringing together key policymakers and a wide range of service users.
One year in, the government’s three year plan for the radical transformation of social care to personalisation, is overshadowed by inadequate funding and recession. How is the momentum for change to be maintained and what do service users want that change to look like?
Service users identify a radical and coherent programme for reform that goes far beyond the expansion of personal budgets, demanding:
Co-author Peter Beresford is Chair of Shaping Our Lives and Professor of Social Policy, Brunel University and a long term user of mental health services.
Authors: Peter Beresford and Frances Hasler
Forewords by: Dame Denise Platt and Chris Jenks, Vice Chancellor, Brunel University
Published by: Brunel University Press, April 2009
ISBN: 978-1-902316-62-8
114 pages
With Easyread Summary
To download a PDF version please click here
To download a word version please click here
In March 2008 Shaping Our Lives was commissioned by Cumbria County Council to find out what residents of six residential care homes thought about the Council's proposals for modernising the homes. We analysed the results of a wide ranging public survey and spoke to all the residents of the care homes who wanted to participate in the consultation. We worked alongside an advocacy organisation, Advocacy Experience, to ensure that the older people had every opportunity to make their voices heard. For a brief report please see the Summer 2008 newsletter, pages 8 and 9. Click here if you would like to read the full report.
15 people took part in a consultation to find out more about service users' views about the registration of domiciliary care workers who work through agencies. The General Social Care Council is using the findings to inform a consultation with a wider range of stakeholders.
The results of the Shaping Our Lives discussion group will be made available when the findings of the full consultation are published. Please contact us if you would like us to get in touch with updates of when this might be.
Shaping Our Lives was asked by the General Social Care Council (GSCC) to set up a consultation meeting with service users as part of a process in which the government is looking at the work of social workers, to see how it might need to change to fit the needs of the 21st century. Similar reviews have taken place in Scotland and Wales.
Shaping Our Lives, in association with other service user organisations, is also putting together a report which is based on what many service users have said and written about social work over the years. We hope that this will influence the review in a helpful way and ensure that more service user voices are heard.
We worked on with the Social Care Workforce Research Unit at King’s College London to help produce a Practice Guide for the Social Care Institute for Excellence on the participation of service users in social care. To have a look at the Guide please click here.
A collaboration with the Edward Lear Foundation – a disability think-tank, independent of the Disability Rights Commission or any other organisation – to identify the barriers faced by disabled people, as a basis for a regular survey which will enable the Commission to check whether the Disability Discrimination Act is leading to real improvements for disabled people in the areas that really matter to us.
