This week, the SILC partnership (a consortium of health and social care organisations based in Solihull – SoLO is a member) got the go ahead to undertake a review of personalisation within the borough through the LINks programme.
This will mean that we in SoLO will be approaching a number of people to gauge how personalisation has impacted on their lives and whether it has made a positive difference to them.
I wonder what we will find? I certainly have mixed feelings on what we are experiencing at the moment.
On a positive note – we have been able, through personal budgets, to provide an innovative alternative to the traditional buildings based day service for adults with a learning disability. This project, called Daylight, is giving adults with a learning disability the opportunity to ‘own’ their own activity programme, to learn independent living skills (which they can take into their own homes) to be out and about within their local community and to develop friendships. As the ‘customer’, buying their own activity programme, they have a say in how it is run and developed.
We have also just received registration for CQC which will enable us to provide a Personal Assistants Service to those who receive a personal budget, don’t want to employ people direct and need the reassurance that those who will be supporting their loved ones will be trained and supervised.
On a less positive note – we are witnessing a system that is far from perfect and is stretching the overworked resources of many agencies who are trying their best to make it work. The outcome, for many, is that they are caught up in the loop of assessments, re-assessments and trying to understand how it all works. Often, this is added to the day to day demands that come from having caring responsibilities for someone needing support, whilst still trying to live your own life, often with the added dimension of getting older yourself.
It will be interesting to see what the review uncovers and, hopefully, we will be able to cascade the learning to other agencies and help to make the system work for everyone!