Meeting the neighbours

Much social policy of the past 25 years promotes ideas of independence, choice and control. These seem to be straightforwardly good things, but how often do you stop to think about what they mean for the way we support people?

The first thing to say is that there is a very obvious political message in the prominence given to these ideas. They articulate a more general obsession with individualism and market forces, so that independence, choice and control might be translated as ‘you are on your own’, ‘life is a bit like a supermarket’ and ‘here’s the money, you decide what to buy’. This is a very crude characterisation to be sure, but the metaphor of the supermarket does seem to resonate with so much of what is happening in health and social care at present.

Some bemoan the use of the term independence as cover for not providing adequate support for someone to live independently, ie in their own home. This was the point made by Charlotte Leslie, a Tory candidate in in her blog for the Daily Mail in the lead up to the 2010 general election – which seems ironic given what has happened since. But to be fair to her, politicians form across the political spectrum could have been making the same point about people being let down by an underfunded system.

The real question is to what extent is independence about being on your own? Loneliness is something that very few people crave, but is one of the outcomes often associated with ‘community care’. In many policies independence means little more that living in a home of your own while much of the academic literature conflates choice, control and independence under the banner of autonomy. In broad terms this describes those aspects of my life about which I can exert some influence.

Yet we are social animals, not simply because we cannot function at even the simplest level without the cooperation of others, but because it helps us to feel safe, happy and stimulated. Take a few moments to read this article in which journalists from one national newspaper report what happened when they were set the task of getting to know their neighbours. The strategies involved, the emotions it provokes and the results achieved by this simple self-connecting will be familiar to many of you from your work.

What it illustrates is that however independent or autonomous we feel, our lives are inevitably interdependent with those of other. In social policy this is referred to as community. Now I’m not suggesting we add another word to our vocabulary of jargon, but ‘community’ itself has become so hackneyed with use over the years, and applied so widely as a balm to suggest something is safe, homely and genuine, that its usefulness has been devalued.

My point is that we need to find a better balance between independence and interdependence not only in what we aspire to in policy, but also in how we make it happen. So as a society we acknowledge that people sometimes need a lot of help to live in their own homes and make their own decisions, but somehow we assume that meeting the neighbours is something that will just happen.

So what are the implications for connectors? Well, perhaps the best way of helping people to meet their neighbours is not to think to long and hard about it, but just do it.

What are your thoughts, tips and experiences of helping someone to meet their neighbours?

Are you in the right line of work?

Is it possible to make a career out of connecting? Although relationship-building has long been integral to a number of job roles, connecting as a discrete activity is a relatively recent innovation. The job does not lend itself to the usual battery of standards, competencies and qualifications that define a career pathway. Connectors are employed in a variety of ways and by a variety of employers, including Personal Budget holders. Against a background of an evolving social care landscape, job insecurity and restricted public funding it is a tough time to be in the vanguard of a new way to support people make the most of their lives.

However, two recent publications provide evidence that should prompt optimism about the long-term future for this type of work. Both tells us something about the future demand for connecting services.

The first comes from the Connecting People study being run by a team based at Kings College London. This is important because of the scale and scope of the research involved, providing us with the clearest picture yet of how people are choosing to utilise their support. The most recent report says that the way people are spending their personal budgets suggest they want to buy support that enables them to develop social connections, to experience new things, and to share activities with others: in other word the role that  connectors fulfill.

The second publication is an analysis of trends in the social care workforce produced by Skills for Care. This sets out predictions for huge growth in the social care workforce in the next few decades with an increasing proportion paid for through direct payments. It also forecasts a greater diversity in the sources of support, both paid and unpaid, that will be required to meet people’s needs.

These findings confirm what a lot us already know; that connecting needs to be at the heart of the social care agenda rather than at the periphery which is where it is too often located. A challenge of the next few years therefore is to ensure that the evidence and arguments for connecting continue to be made locally and nationally and that the money available to fund social care follows the demand for this type of support. To my mind, it is equally important to get policymakers, commissioners and employers to understand how rewarding connecting can be for the people who do it and to find ways to ensure that the good connectors are retained.   

Free events!

It is important that we all keep abreast of new developments in the field so that we can find out about and try new ways of helping people make connections. The internet is the most obvious way of doing this and can yield a lot of invaluable information, but it rarely has the same impact as the knowledge that flows from a conversation with someone interested in the same area of work.

Conferences, workshops and seminars are the traditional forums for these conversations to take place and, although it is something of a cliche, it is undoubtedly true that the really meaningful exchanges happen in the spaces between the formal sessions; over coffee, during lunch or in the time it takes to smoke a cigarette. In a time of austerity the opportunities to attend such events (which can be very expensive) are rare, so it is worth keeping an eye out for free events.

I do this by signing up with with organisations and projects that regularly run events that are free to attend. Here are two free events taking place in London over the next month or so that I’ve signed up for having received an email alert.

The first is being hosted by The Connecting People Study which has been developing and promoting a form of community connecting across the social care field. I’ve attended their events in the past and picked up lots of helpful ideas from the other people there. They are running a series of events around the country, so it is worth checking out their website and Facebook page to see if there is something local that you could attend.

Taking Learning Forward – Connecting People Engagement Event

September 24, 2013 at 10:30 am – 2:00 pm

King’s College London

Details and booking information here (opens new tab)

The second event is being run by an organisation called NPC (New Philanthropy Capital) in conjunction with The Guardian newspaper. NPC provides information about charities that will be of interest to funders, but in doing so they produce some useful publications.

Communities that work: Building social capital in areas of need?

Friday, 18 October 2013 from 08:30 to 10:30 (BST)

NPC and The Guardian

London, United Kingdom

Details and booking information here (opens new tab)

If you know of any free events that you can share, then please let me know.

Connecting for the Festival season

Last week I gave a presentation about adult safeguarding to The Transitions Event held at the National Motorcycle Museum near Birmingham. Many of the people attending were parents of young adults with learning disabilities wanting to know more about what awaits their sons and daughters once they become adults. It was refreshing to see that much of what was on offer during the day had a practical focus; about getting a job, choosing a good place to live, benefits, circles of support  and how to negotiate effectively with statutory agencies. Outside the conference hall the trade stands were doing good business with parents and professional eager for information about the support that will be available in the adult world.

My turn came right at the end of the day in the ‘graveyard slot’ just before the conference closed, with an audience fatigued with conferenceitis and anxious to beat the traffic. What I had to say was based on the adult safeguarding resource for family carers that Hft is launching this summer and will available from the resources section of their Family Carer Support Service website – this is something I mentioned in an earlier post. The overall message that I was trying to convey is this: that although keeping safe is a crucial aspect of quality of life a person’s quality of life can be affected adversely if they are never able to take risks. We only learn to cross a road safely by doing it, for example.

Now I can say this in a variety of ways, but what really resonated with the audience last Thursday was a film of Vicki Raphael talking about her son Christian’s life. As Vicki says in the film all of her children do risky things, but that is how they grow as adults. For Christian the only difference is that he always has someone there to support him. She goes on to talk about how Christian’s circle of support planned for him to attend what is potentially a very risky event, a music festival, which he has now done on several occasions.

Crucially, Christian has a personal budget which he uses to employ his own staff. Camping out for three day festival or attending a gig in town may take some planning but is relatively easy to arrange. For others with less intensive packages of support it may be more difficult to find that balance between keeping safe and making the most of life at those times of the day and week when support is less likely to be available. This is where connecting can be so important. The Gig Buddies scheme in Brighton is just one example of how community resources – in this case live music lovers – can be galvanised to include people with learning disabilities.

One of the purposes of this blog is to share ideas and information about connecting, so if you know of similar examples that help people with learning disabilities play an active part in cultural communities, please let us know using the ‘share’ tab.

Sorry its been a while…

…Since the last post. Shortly before Christmas the Legal Services Board sent out a tender for a short piece of research about what happens when people with learning disabilities need to get legal advice. It’s a really pertinent issue in these days of narrowing FACS eligibility, welfare ‘reform’ and job insecurity, to say nothing of the discrimination that is still faced by people with learning disabilities. I’ve teamed up with Norah Fry to do the work. You can find out more about the study here.

That work is, and will continue to be, intense, so it was refreshing to have a break of sorts when at the end of January we ran another connecting workshop, this time in the wonderfully grand Devonport Guildhall on the outskirts of Plymouth.I’m looking forward to the next workshop which is taking place in Derby, at Derby YMCA, 25^th April. You can check the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities website for details.

In praise of dogs

At that workshop in Plymouth we were discussing how relationships develop in unexpected ways. I mentioned how a whole new circle of people opened up to me when Tommy a rescue dog came to live with us about 18 months ago.

For those interested in such things, Tommy is a Saluki, a sight hound bred for hunting in the deserts of the Middle East. He is very fast which means that he needs plenty of space to run around where there is no danger he can run across a road. The places where I’d walked previous dogs and where I’d come to know fellow dog walkers were all unsuitable, so there was a period of trial and error while I found somewhere to exercise my new companion.

We finally found an open stretch of land that was ideal for him to run about safely. Of course it is also the right place for many other dogs to do the same. Every morning a gaggle of dogs and owners would convene at the same spot and while the dogs did the things that dogs do, the owners would chat amiably.

Approaching any new social situation is nerve wracking for dog and owner. From the outside members of the group exude an air of easy familiarity, picking up conversations from previous meetings, passing on gossip, sharing common reference points. But the reason we are all there, the thing that we all have in common are the dogs. The opening exchange to or with any new owner on the scene is, therefore, invariably about their dog, in the same way that parents at the school gate will naturally strike up a conversation about their children.

So far, so obvious. After six months of pursuing this daily routine I reckoned that I knew a lot about the members of the dog owning circle and they knew a good deal about me. And as the weeks progressed, a number of shared interests emerged, useful information was exchanged and local gossip broadcasted. I found out one dog walker’s husband is an ex-England footballer, another is a professional rugby player, one has worked on the Confidential Inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities (published today). I received several recommendations for trades people when having some work done on my house, while I passed on an enquiry about possible sources of therapy for problem being experienced the neighbour of a dog walker.

In other words, the routine exchanges that mark most groups. But the point is that from being a routine activity, it became something that I looked foward to each morning and still do. On the days when the usual crowd don’t turn up I feel a little disappointed, although this is invariably mitigated by the prospect of meeting new dogs, with owners in tow, who will want to chat while the pooches make their own canine introductions.

One day, as the group dispersed, one of the owners turned to me and rather apologetically said “I’m sorry, but I can’t remember your name”. I knew her name only because I’d heard other people using it. And this was someone with whom I’d conversed at length, on many occasions about all manner of topics. I knew about her working life, her aspirations in retirement, the careers of her children, the ups and downs in her relationships with various neighbours and much more.

“That’s because I’ve never told you” I replied. We both laughed at the absurdity of the situation. That I’d simply been known as ‘Tommy’s man’ until that point was a helpful reminder of the role that proxies – in this case dogs – can play in making connections.

Special offer on January workshop

Just a quick post to let you know that we will be running a community connecting workshop for frontline staff in Devonport, Plymouth on 30th January.

There are more details in the flyer below. The cost is £50 per person, but there is a 3 for 2 offer if you book before 15th January.

Community Connecting_event flyer Jan 30th 2013

Booking form 2013

Does connecting keep people safe?

For the past six months I’ve been working on a resource pack about adult safeguarding specifically designed for the families and friends of people with learning disabilities. You may not be surprised to learn that it was commissioned by a family carer support service in response to the volume of enquiries they’d received about safeguarding in the wake of Winterbourne View. My preliminary research for the pack revealed that a vast amount of time and energy is expended on what happens when things go wrong; the policies, procedures and structures for responding to an allegation of abuse or evidence of harm. Yet family carers’ day-to-day experience of supporting a relative to keep safe are almost wholly about prevention; equipping them with the strategies that balance safety and risk-taking. It is what we all do so that we have a decent quality of life. There are some really good initiatives to be found that address this, including Bournemouth People First’s Out Right project.

What this imbalance reflects is the priority given to safeguarding in service settings, and It is right and proper that clear and robust safeguarding arrangements are in place in these circumstances. However, as family carers told me during the filming I did with them, the most important factor in keeping a relative safe is having people around who know them and care about them, who will look out for them – people they can turn to if they feel threatened or upset. The families who were most concerned about things going wrong were those with relatives living far away perhaps cared for by staff who didn’t know them well.

The issue of safety is something that is often raised in relation to community connecting. There is a view that helping people forge new relationships is inherently risky and that public spaces are dangerous places to be. A question that is sometimes asked in relation to connecting is, ‘have these people been CRB checked before you introduce them?’ Setting aside the questionable effectiveness of such checks, this sort of concern illustrates the misconception that some people have about both what keeps people safe and what it is that connectors are trying to do. Connectors must have a duty of care towards the people they are working with and need to use their judgement in discharging that duty. That may entail assessing a risk, however informally, or checking things out with other people. And things will go wrong.

Ultimately however, there is a symbiosis between safety and good community connections for all the reasons set out above. Yet this message remains deeply counter-intuitive to some people, including families, so it is one that we need to think about and communicate clearly. We’d love to hear about your experiences. Are you struggling with this issue? Or do you have a story to share about overcoming concerns about safeguarding? If so, please get in touch.

Derbyshire’s pilot project – advice sought

I recently visited Matlock and met Iseult Cocking and Steve Jenkinson to hear about Derbyshire County Council’s pilot community connecting scheme. People using the scheme work with a connector for an intensive period, 2 days a week over a 12 week period, to help them find alternatives to traditional day services utilising a Personal Budget . The outcomes from the the first year of operation have been very encouraging, but they have noticed that some people who have been successfully connected have started to drift back to the day service they used to attend for many years. They feel this may be because a lot of their friends are there, or because they aren’t able to fill their day with activities and are getting bored.

Iseult wonders if other services have encountered this and what solutions they have found. “We have thought about maybe setting up a drop in service but this wouldn’t be available on a daily basis and it was more intended as being somewhere people could go to socialise and if they wanted information and advice.”

Do you have any suggestions about what would be helpful? Can you suggest someone Iseult and Steve can speak to about this? If so, please post a reply below.

You’re not listening to me…

Community Connecting Workshop, London, 18th October

We’ve all come across someone we might consider a ‘natural connector’ – the sort of person who finds it easy to make new relationships, who just seems to be good at handling social situations that make others feel anxious or uncomfortable. From my vantage point, standing in the kitchen, I see them moving easily about the party – ‘the life and soul’ – always finding something to say, asking the right questions, putting people at ease with their gestures, expressions or reassuring tone of voice. Is this a gift that those people happen to be born with or is it something that anyone can learn?

Last week we ran the first of a series of workshops for people wanting to use connecting in their day-to-day work. We started by practicing one of the key aspects of relationship-building, and therefore connecting:  introductions. How we introduce ourselves, how we introduce people to each other. The exercise required participants to reflect upon their use of the social skills that we all take for granted until we are asked to employ them in new or ‘unnatural’ situations. For example, one person was given the task of introducing themselves to someone, and discovering a shared interest not related to the jobs that either of them do. After 15 minutes they were supposed to have found a contact (a person or organisation) or idea that would allow either of them to further the shared interest. Quite apart from the skills required to initiate and guide this conversation, the task required concentration and creativity. Of course some found it harder to do than others.

There can be little doubt that having good relationship-building skills, and the ability to use them creatively, is advantageous in a whole range of vocational roles. A few days after the workshop my wife asked me to help her with the layout of presentation she was preparing. She is a clinical psychologist and had been asked to run a training session on ‘active listening and attending’ for peer mentors in the service she works for. I noticed that her opening gambit went like this:

“How many times have you heard someone say ‘you’re not listening to me’ and the other person says ‘yes I am, I can repeat word for word everything you have said’. The person speaking is not comforted. What people look for in attending and listening is not that the other person can repeat their words but the want the listener to be present psychologically, socially and emotionally… Listening is such an important skill, yet we tend to take it for granted. We tend to think of listening as being the same as hearing, and so it can lead you to believe that effective listening is instinctive. As a result, most people make little effort to learn or develop listening skills. In fact – whole books have been devoted to how to be an effective listener.”

I was immediately reminded of a piece of research I did at Bristol University back in the mid 90’s. The idea was to come up with a tool for assessing social work students based on what ‘clients’ want from their social workers. Even then there was a stack of research evidence going back 30 years that people wanted their social workers to be good listeners, empathetic, warm, open and so on. In other words, people who are good at making and sustaining a relationship. The assessment tool was not widely adopted, although 10 years later I was asked to reprise the findings of this work for a social training initiative by the Department of Health. Yet the profile of skills training in the curriculum remained low for the reasons, I suspect, outlined already – social skills may be recognised as important, but we take it for granted that it is not something that we have to work at. [I hope this has changed and would be interested in hearing other people’s experiences from their education and training.]

So, while the role and function of a connector may differ from that of a peer mentor or social worker, they share – along with any number of health and social care professions – a core set of skills in relationship-building. We may or may not be lucky enough to be a ‘natural’ when it comes to parties, but we all need firstly, to value the skills that can help us be good connectors, and secondly,  to recognise that to be truly effective we must work at them, practice, and adapt them to the particular demands of connecting.

Winterbourne View: a local service for local people?

It comes as something of a shock to realise that I’ve spent half my life helping people with learning disabilities get a decent life in the community. I’m now the wrong side of 50 so it really does feel like a long stretch since the days when I played a minor role in closing the long-stay hospitals in Somerset. In the intervening years I’ve remained optimistic that the incremental changes in attitude, values and practice amount to a real improvements in the lives of people with learning disabilities.

Then something like Winterbourne View happens and we all have to question ourselves. I’d urge everyone to make it their business to understand what went on there. The report of the Serious Case Review published last week is shocking in so many respects, but mostly notably for the picture it paints of a system in which no one body was either willing or able to take responsibility for ensuring the safety and well-being of the people at the heart of the scandal.

While safeguarding has, quite rightly, been the focus of much of the reporting and commentary around Winterbourne – and it is something I will be returning to in later posts – it was another aspect of the scandal that really caught my eye: the vast sums of money being spent in the for-profit sector for something that neither did what it was supposed to do (assess and treat) or meet the needs of anyone involved.

I raise this because for the past three and a half years I’ve been working with colleagues from the Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities to help small third sector organisations set up and deliver ‘connecting’ services: the sort of creative, flexible, person-centred, local, community-based support that researchers, policy-makers, families, people with learning disabilities and numerous report writers tell us are the way forward. Despite being something that people and their families want, getting the money to make it happen has been a real challenge.

Connecting is one of those simple ideas that address two of our most basic human needs; to form relationships based on mutual respect and to play a valued role in society. By widening the circle of those who care about and are interested in someone, it also addresses another human need; to feel safe. Connectors act as agents, brokering and nurturing relationships between people with and without disabilities based on reciprocity, shared interests and mutual need. You can find some inspiring stories about the work of connectors on the Foundation’s website.

We don’t pretend that connecting is the solution to everyone’s needs, but it can be a crucial ingredient in the support mix of professionals, paid carers, families and circles of support. Yet here’s the rub. The costs of connecting are relatively small and it has the potential for saving money in the longer-term as naturally supportive relationships are fostered by it. Why then is it so difficult for some commissioners and care managers to engage with the idea, let alone promote and sponsor it, when such large sums can be committed to purchasing out of area placements (the average weekly cost of a place at Winterbourne was £3,500)?

We are all aware of the squeeze on care budgets, especially social care budgets and the effect that this is having on eligibility for people with a whole range of needs. But another consequence of the financial squeeze is that social care commissioning itself is in a state of flux with an increased turnover in posts and many incumbents just ‘passing through’ on their way to another job or no job at all. Without the time to get a detailed knowledge about the local market and without time or funds to develop the capacity of those markets, it is no wonder that even the best commissioners feel compelled to go with what is available.

Perhaps most disappointing of all is the slow progress made in implementing the sort of individual funding that gives real control to people with learning disabilities and their families. Where it has been introduced we hear too many stories about restrictions placed upon how and where individual funds can be spent. The effect can be dispiriting for those small services and social enterprises that we have been working with and who everyone from David Cameron (Big Society) downwards agrees must be part of the solution to raising standards and improving choice in social care.

A grisly irony emerging from the various reports on Winterbourne View is that some commissioners purchased places there because it represented a move closer to home for the people involved. But those people were the ones who, on average (19 months), spent longest there. For ‘local services for local people’ to become reality we need to begin investing in those new forms of support, like connecting, but that can only happen if we also invest in commissioning.