If you need social care support, why can’t services respond better to your individual aspirations – instead of fitting you into what’s already on offer?
This aim – shifting traditional social work practice to “community led” methods – is at the heart of a new programme I’ve just reported on.
Leeds is one of nine local authorities changing adult social care by developing community-led social work (in a nutshell – more local solutions). The councils are being supported in this drive by social inclusion charity National Development Team for Inclusion’s community-led support (CLS) programme. NDTi has just published an evaluation from the first year of delivery in the participating areas
Gail*, for example, has a learning difficulty, mobility problems and is prone to angry outbursts. Leeds council adult social care staff have supported her intermittently over a few years, helping with self-care and chaotic living conditions.
Recently, it considered commissioning weekly visits from a support worker to help Gail manage her home. But instead, under a new approach launched in Leeds last year, Gail met social work staff at community “talking points” – venues such as libraries and churches instead of at home or at the council. The neutral environment sparked different conversations about support. Gail said she wanted to volunteer and staff felt able to be more creative with her care.
A social worker supported Gail to explore opportunities at her community centre, where she began volunteering. Her self-esteem has grown, her personal appearance has improved and she has begun anger management classes.
Feedback from people like Gail involved in the new support method includes comments about staff such as “they listened to me” and “we did talk about the important things”.
The concept of community social work is not new, but demand for social care, pressure on staff and funding cuts mean less time and freedom to develop innovative solutions. The 2014 Care Act encourages community-focused support, but this has been hard to achieve. A difficulty in developing “strengths-based” solutions is well documented, for example, in recent guidance from Think Local Act Personal.
At Leeds, adult social services director Cath Roff says the council had two choices: “Either we go down the road of ever-tightening interpretation of eligibility criteria to manage resources, or try a new approach. Social work services are increasingly becoming the ‘border patrol’, policing in order to manage reducing budgets. None of us came into social care to do that.”
Guest post by Tracy Fishwick, chief executive of Transform Lives
Leeds Community Homes is striving for a people-powered community housing revolution, placing the new organisation at the cutting edge of housing practice.
The not-for-profit group has raised £360,000 to invest in 16 permanently affordable homes through community shares (a type of share capital called ‘withdrawable shares’ issued by co-operatives or community benefit societies). With the first tenants due to move in by next April, the organisation’s #peoplepoweredhomes campaign is an innovative way to create housing developed by local people, to meet the housing needs of local people. The project wants to create 1,000 affordable homes over the next decade.
People-focused housing solutions are at the heart of the People’s Powerhouse event taking place next month. The housing group’s work in Leeds is the kind of positive story of local change that we hope will inspire delegates to recreate similar projects in their own communities. More good practice like this is vital at a time of chronic housing shortage, with housebuilding falling almost 100,000 homes per year short of achieving the government’s ambition.
You may have read about the People’s Powerhouse which was launched in February and originally billed in the press as “a rival ‘northern powerhouse’ conference to one that advertised 15 male speakers but no women and just 13 of all 98 listed speakers were women”.
Leeds Community Homes, Plus Dane Housing and my own company, Transform Lives, are just some of the organisations taking part. We hope the People’s Powerhouse will help create a dialogue about inclusive, good growth, and its potential to transform communities and lives across the North of England.
Other work worth replicating includes Give Get Go, which Transform Lives collaborates on with a group of housing organisations. The initiative supports social housing tenants into work – connecting unemployed people to employers through volunteering and mentoring, growing skills and confidence and creating jobs. Key to the project’s success is bringing civic institutions and leaders together for the first time to work collaboratively in Liverpool, including the University of Liverpool, Everton FC and the National Trust.
We also work with Plus Dane Housing on its Waves of Hope Big Lottery programme, which aims to tackle homelessness and other complex barriers to work. In just two years, the project has supported 236 people, 83% of whom say their rough sleeping has been reduced. And 67% report a reduction in substance misuse. Both Plus Dane Housing and our other partner, the University of Liverpool, will be showcasing this work at the People’s Powerhouse, underlining the difference we can make when we find good ways of working collaboratively and locally.
Our hope is that we will build a long-term movement for change that supports good and inclusive growth in the North with a particular focus on how people are the key to growth. The aim is to include all sectors and sections of the community, harnessing the combined skills and leverage of the public sector, voluntary, community, civic leaders and business.
As Lord Victor Adebowale, chairman of Social Enterprise UK and chief executive of social enterprise Turning Point, says: “’People’s Powerhouse’ perfectly reflects our vision for economic investment in the North of England.” Social enterprises often find innovative solutions to social issues and as Lord Victor, a People’s Powerhouse keynote speaker, adds: “We cannot allow anyone to be left behind. Investment in the North must be inclusive and must be used to support communities as well as businesses, adding value to the lives of real people.”
* The People’s Powerhouse event takes place on Wednesday 12 July from 10am-4pm at Doncaster Rovers Football Ground. For more information and to register see the website. Discounts are available including for young people and for small enterprises and charities.
Kay Alston’s campaign for London’s first sensory bus was inspired by her use of sensory books (photo: Kay Alston/Outward)
Responding to a lack of relaxing, interactive spaces for disabled people, Londoner Kay Alston has decided to launch her own campaign for the capital’s first ever sensory bus.
The 32-year-old, who has moderate learning disabilities, is backed in her social enterprise project to create a mobile sensory room by Outward, the care and support charity that runs her supported living in Camden, north London.
Kay needs to raise £28,245 towards creating the project. A sensory room is a relaxing environment designed to focus on specific senses through special objects, and sound and visual effects. It enables people to interact with, and control the environment around them and is particularly beneficial for people with sensory impairments, complex needs and those with autism.
Kay Alston in her sensory room at home in London.
The idea is that people would pay a minimal fee to use the bus, with the money being reinvested into the social enterprise. The accessible vehicle would include elements like interactive carpets, star ceiling and LED Projectors.
Here, Kay explains why her project is so vital:
“Someone once said that sensory rooms have effects of taking medication without taking the medication. The room would be a stimulating place for people, and it could help to reduce anxiety and stress, and help to improve their concentration. People with disabilities should come to sensory rooms because it’s fun and fascinating.
“The sensory room on a bus will be an interactive and a calming environment. It will have an interactive floor, platform swing, bubble tubes and light projectors with music playing in the background too. The bus will be accessible to wheelchair users. It’s purpose would be to calm and stimulate people, by giving them an interactive and visually stimulating environment.
My idea was inspired by the Autism Show. I went to in 2014 where I got a sensory tactile book, and I have been to other sensory rooms and they’re lots of fun. I have been to day centres and nursing homes where people with high needs simply get parked on the side and have nothing to do. Outward was running a Dragon’s Den competition and staff who already knew of my idea encouraged me to enter. Outward invested in my idea and said they will help me set it up. Outward staff spoke to me about the online fundraising campaign, and helped put it online and I handed out over 100 leaflets to places I shop in, people I know and places where I use their services. It’s also nice to be a little famous.
I hope the bus will be a fun and interactive place for people to learn new things. People with high needs find it difficult to get out, and can’t easily go to a place like a sensory room. Everyone can do what they want and behave in a way where they won’t be judged, sometimes I walk along the street and laugh and people look at me funny and it makes me think I want more control. In a sensory bus I could have more control.
I want to run it through a social enterprise to make it bigger and better, to add new inventions and more equipment to use. The bus will drive around to different places to give more people a chance to experience and use it.
There isn’t a sensory bus in London, and there aren’t many sensory rooms in London. The sensory rooms in London aren’t properly maintained, so I have only been to sensory rooms outside of London. But some people can’t travel that far or outside of London, so a sensory bus would make it easier by going to them. People haven’t thought of a sensory room in London to be on a bus, and there isn’t a sensory room with an interactive floor.
The most difficult thing so far has been getting enough people to pledge as I don’t have many connections. But it is a unique idea because there isn’t a sensory bus in London. If we could make this happen it would be a great achievement for me and would help lots of people in London.”
Oii My Size, a web-based project to raise awareness about respect in teen relationships
Late night on the estate, London. Two hooded and capped teen boys hang out, waiting for a couple of teen girls. Nervously the girls approach. Tiana used to go out with Stigz, but she’s not sure about this new guy he’s brought along. She thought they were going out to a party, but the boys lead them to this new guy’s place. His parents are out. Tiana fights her instincts to run. The door shuts. The boys start to grab them. The girls resist but they won’t stop. Everything happens so fast…
Thankfully these events are just part of an awareness-raising film for Oii My Size, a youth-led project targeting teens. The Oii My Size project. For those not down with the kids, “my size” means “my kind of girl”. The project is based on a colourful website full of videos and pictures to help teens understand what makes relations between teen boys and girls appropriate and respectful.
The scenario described above is, however, based on a true story and reflects the reality of life for many teen girls. From serious assault like this, to sharing naked pictures of them (sexting) and being spoken to disrespectfully, life can be a minefield for girls when it comes to teen boys. A recent study by the NSPCC reported up to 40 per cent of young people had been involved in sexting, mainly under pressure from other schoolchildren while a conference in Manchester run by the area’s Safeguarding Children Board heard reports from schools that sexting had become a “daily problem” affecting girls as young as 11 years old.
No one knows this better than the group of 12 teen girls who have shaped Oii My Size.
The girls, aged 16, from Pimlico, London, met to socialise until becoming involved in a Peabody Staying Safe campaign. The girls had previously worked with youth arts company Dream Arts to produce a warning video about staying safe around boys and jumped at the chance to spread the message about safe relationships and the dangers of sexting (sending indecent images to an under-18 is illegal). The video, which starred the girls themselves, is now on the Oii My Size site.
All of the girls had some kind of personal experience with the topic – whether affected directly, like the events in the video, or having friends who had to move schools due to sexting, or being exposed to abuse such as a Blackberry Messenger “slags list” – where girls are publicly named and shamed.
The girls were supported by Peabody, Dream Arts and youth-led media social enterprise Mediorite, which I volunteer with. Peabody worked with the girls under its Staying Safe campaign, Dream Arts supported them to work together and provided them with a specialist support worker for two hours each week after school.
As well as tackling issues such as sexting , Oii My Size focuses on disrespectful chat-up lines (or “churpz”) and when to say no in teen relationships. The magazine-style website also has light-hearted videos of teen boys trying out their best (read:worst) churpz on the unimpressed girls, like “Do you work at Subway? Cos you got me on a foot-long” and invites users to “rate my churpz”. This cleverly avoids preaching by demonstrating that the disrespectful churpz just make girls feel embarrassed, intimidated and degraded. In other words –boys- they do not work.
The website also contains a video of Althia Legal-Miller, a doctoral research student at King’s College, London, and an expert in female adolescence and violence. She explains the dangers of sexting, promoting the key message of “trust your instincts” to teenage girls in relationships.
The girls behind the project say they “have chosen this topic as we have realized that we feel intimidated and disrespected due to our gender.” Team member Shanice George explains that “hopefully the website will educate young girls and boys that sexting is illegal, cos we didn’t even know it was illegal until we started the project, and if we didn’t know how were other people to know? Also we wanted to educate boys on how they talk to girls… and we are now working with a domestic violence woman from Peabody and we would like to make girls aware about domestic violence too.”
Lucy Ferguson from Mediorite adds that the girls felt the topic “was a real, urgent issue that just wasn’t being tackled at school, and that no one was tackling it…The project was a success because the girls really challenged themselves to think about the audience.”
The girls not only gained new skills from the project but also won a Silver Arts Award, an Open College Network accreditation in project management via Peabody and a Nominet internet safety award. The website got 2000 hits in 24 hours the day after they won the award, and has been promoted at school assemblies by the girls to over 3000 people.
The project’s audience will undoubtedly grow, as Lucy Ferguson explains: “Most youth groups don’t really explore what someone who doesn’t know them is going to think of their project, they don’t think about how to sell and engage the audience, but these girls really got that. So ‘rate my churpz’ – as a traffic-driver is a really sophisticated idea. It shows they understood the need to engage boys too, and draw people in with a sense of humour, and then engage them with the harder content. Most youth groups are completely unforgiving to the audience. This was a much more sophisticated approach.”
Whose pants do you pop on? Whose name’s in your knickers? Who’s behind your briefs? Who styled your smalls? And just where is this intro going?
Enough already. While retail guru Mary Portas last night kicked off her pledge to reignite the UK clothing industry with a range of 100% British knickers, one campaigning social entrepreneur in the south of England has slowly, steadily and rather stylishly been making ethical underwear since 2009.
Becky John in the Who Made Your Pants factory, Southampton
Who Made Your Pants is based in Southampton and run by Becky John. Each pair of pants is sent out with a tag which allows you to find out who made them. There’s something of an interactive knicker-namechecker where you punch in the date on the tag and check who made your pants.
The organisation’s quirky name belies its strong, pro-woman campaigning zeal and while it’s less bra-burning and more pants-producing, the ethos is simply “amazing pants, and amazing women”.
The business is a women’s co-operative which employs seven women, mostly refugees. From the fabric that goes to make the underwear (recycled from end of season lingerie stock sold by big companies that would otherwise go to waste) to the working conditions in the small factory, the company is ethically-run.
The women are from Afghanistan, Somalia, the Sudan and potential workers come via refugee support agencies (although the firm now has a waiting list for employees). There is training and support as well as a computer suite for the women to use email and the internet, so the factory is something of a social and community space as well as a workplace.
While ethical clothing ranges are nothing new (and neither, for that matter, are undies with a social conscience), the Southampton women’s co-op commands attention as a small but perfectly formed community-based drive to make a difference.
Season’s greetings from The Social Issue – to mark the jollities, here’s a snapshot of some of the upbeat posts and pictures about people, projects and places featured over the last 12 months. This festive pick is by no means the best of the bunch – the inspiring stories below are included as they’re accompanied by some interestin and images and almost fit with a festive carol, if you allow for a little the poetic and numerical licence…
Very huge thanks to the Social Issue’s small band of regular and guest bloggers, all contributors, supporters, readers and everyone who’s got in touch with story ideas and feedback. See you in January.
On the first day of Christmas, the blogosphere brought to me:
A tiger in an art show Batik Tiger created by a student at specialist autism college, Beechwood
Two JCBs The Miller Road project, Banbury, where agencies are tackling youth housing and training. Pic: John Alexander
Three fab grans Hermi, 85: “I don’t really feel like an older woman.”
Four working teens From antisocial behaviour to force for social good; Buzz Bikes, Wales.
Five(ish) eco tips Eco hero Phil uses a “smart plug” to monitor domestic energy use
Big society in action is how civil society minister Nick Hurd described the award-winning Paddington Development Trust (PDT) which he chose for his first ministerial visit in May 2010. “Residents have real sense of ownership and power,” he enthused on Twitter about the west London regeneration organisation that supports residents to volunteer a total of 5,000 hours through 350 different volunteering opportunities.
But shortly after Hurd’s praise, the organisation was among the first victims of public spending cuts when £350,000 was axed as the government scrapped its neighbourhood programmes. The trust’s chief executive, Neil Johnston, has spent the last year figuring out how to continue its groundbreaking work. Read the rest of my piece for the Guardian’s Society pageshere.
Some of us count the calories when it comes to food, but how many of us count the kilowatts too? Watch the quirky video above – there’s animation and a jolly opening piano melody too – and check out how Brighton-based Rob Smith, a resident of housing association Affinity Sutton, has developed a carbon calculator for the home.
For seven years, Smith has used an online programme to work out the carbon footprint of everything he uses in the home, so that he can find ways to keep reducing it. Beans on toast, he says, comes in at an energy efficient 95w to prepare, while oven-baked fish and chips come in at 200w. Watch Rob work out why the Champions League takes up less energy than the Europa, and how he’s developing his own, open-source programme, which anyone can use to help them make informed decisions about their carbon lifestyle.
Smith’s story will grace the big screen tomorrow evening at a special screening at the Shortwave Cinema, Bermondsey Square, London. He is among five finalists in a national competition run by Affinity Sutton to encourage residents to share their experiences of how they make a positive contribution to the environment.
The five finalists worked with a specialist social enterprise company to create the films which are being put to the public vote on Twitter and via the Affinity Sutton website. The winner will receive an all expenses paid trip to The Eden Project.
Smith adds: “Over the last few years I have been measuring my energy use and then trying to reduce it. But I found that the calculators online were mostly based on estimates. I wanted to develop one to measure absolutely everything you buy, eat and use. I think a lot of people will find it interesting because it provides a more accurate way of measuring your carbon footprint.”
Other green residents include Jeannie and Eddie, from East Grinstead. After approching their housing officer to see if they could plant some bulbs in some disused space, they launched the Salad Project. Over the last year the residents have planted potatoes, runner beans, French beans, and some herbs. An old dustbin was turned into a water butt by a resident, and there is now a composter for food waste.
Power-saving Phil, from Manchester
Then there’s Phil, from Manchester, who uses a “smart plug” to monitor how much energy appliances are using and Tony, Steph and Brian, from Middlesbrough, who launched a recycling facility on their estate. Christine, Ian and Tom, from Stoke, meanwhile, turned a derelict piece of land into a community garden with wildlife area and community classroom facility.
The new recycling station on a Middlesbrough estate
It was only a picture of a gurgling baby. But to one elderly woman with dementia, it meant the world. “She had dementia, was in a care home and was past the stage where she could really have a conversation,” says Helen Bate. “But she just fell in love with that photo. She would try and wipe the baby’s dribble off, or feed it chocolate. It’s just an image – but it had the power to really engage her and she’s been able to talk to it.”
Bate is founder and managing director of Pictures to Share, an innovative social enterprise creating picture books and other resources for people with dementia. She’s a passionate advocate of people with dementia, who she argues shouldn’t be shut off from the world of books and art just because of their condition. “People make too many assumptions about people with dementia,” she says. “There’s often a lack of imagination in their care. If someone liked looking at good painting, they are not going to lose that when they are in a care home. They may not be able to read any more but they can still enjoy looking at the pictures in our books.”
Bate was inspired to start the business after her own mother, a dementia sufferer, enjoyed looking at a scrapbook Bate’s daughter had put together. “There was nothing else out there,” she says. her first three books were published in 2006 and, thanks in part to charitable sponsorship, she has now produced a total of 11, all designed to combat the isolation and depression which can so often be associated with dementia. The organisation has diversified into producing artwork and is now working on dvds.
“If you go into some care homes, it’s almost as if they assume that because people are old and have dementia, all they want to look at on the walls is pictures of the royal family, wartime or old street scenes. It’s pigeonholing everyone into a very narrow category.” The Pictures to Share books cover everything from sport to shopping and from the world of work to travel.
There’s diversity too in the choice of images: colour and black and white photos both old and new are mixed with reproductions of paintings. The key criterion is that all of the images should be powerful and easy to understand to prompt memories, a chat or simply a smile. “Because of their dementia, certain things won’t work if they are too complex,” says Bate. “And we have to be careful about showing pictures people might get worried about. For example, with a picture of children paddling in the sea where you can’t see any adults around, people could get quite distressed because they think the children are in danger.”
I tried out three of the books with my mother, who has multiple dementia. I was unsure how she would react, but I was delighted to find that the pictures inside captured her imagination. She used to be a great traveller, so it was perhaps inevitable that the biggest hit was the travel book. Its shots of the Taj Mahal and train, plane and ship journeys, really got my mum chatting.
The feedback from other users suggests my mum’s response is not unusual. “It opens the channels of communication that are a bit stuck,” she says. “Relatives find them really useful to get a conversation going, which can be tricky for people with dementia.”
For relatives and carers perhaps the most powerful thing about the books is that they remind us all that behind every person with dementia is an individual with their own interests, likes and dislikes and their own life story. They are not all the same, so let’s free our imagination – and theirs – as we care for them.
A school-based performance of The Homophobia Project, by Peer Productions, a Surrey youth arts group supported by local philanthropy
Local philanthropy and volunteers have driven the ‘big society’ in Surrey for years. So is David Cameron’s flagship project only viable for affluent communities? England’s well-heeled home counties are the natural habitat of Cameron’s “big society”. The combination of a time- and cash-rich population and minuscule pockets of deprivation is more conducive to citizens becoming involved and running services than in more deprived areas. Click here to read the piece in Society Guardian today.
