Let's Coproduce Care

The care reflect- Issue 3

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:56:00 GMT

The care reflect- Issue 2

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 09:44:24 GMT

The care reflect- Issue 1

Mon, 16 Mar 2026 11:22:54 GMT

New ebook Chapter Preview - AI and Social Care

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 22:53:25 GMT

Read one of our chapters on AI in Social Care

We are delighted to announce that we are developing an ebook which brings together all the learnings we have developed over the past 7 years in which we have been interviewing key experts in social care.

We are sharing one of our chapters to get feedback and to explore one of the key issues of our time, which was foreseen by one of our guests back in 2020. Namely - AI in social care.

Read the chapter draft here and sign up to find out when the launch of our ebook goes lives. Sign up here: https://www.coproducecare.com/contact8576cd06

Click on any of the the images below to download the whole document.

Email us to tell us what you think of the document: hi@coproducecare.com

We're Back with Podcasts in 2025!

sophie.chester@manorcommunity.co.uk (Sophie Chester) — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 14:53:04 GMT

New Year, New Social Care Podcasts ��️

2025 is set to be a very busy year. There are significant changes to social care brought about by the 2024 Budget and the sector will need to work hard to show not only its resilience but its tenacity in gathering political attention to the existential difficulties it faces this year.

At Coproduce Care we are working to support social care wherever we can to ensure it gets the support it needs to continue to provide care to those who need it.

So, we are delighted to announce that we are returning with regular livestreams. This month of January we have planned two livestreams with over 8 guests as panellists.

The first is on Tuesday 14th January.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/will-2025-see-the-end-of-social-care-tickets-1121734009619?aff=oddtdtcreator

You can also join directly or watch back on the YouTube Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoTJnw2lCmM

The second is to be held on Thursday 16th January .

The focus of this is what can be done to support people to deal with the challenges and for providers to find a way through the challenges.

Don't worry if you miss either of these livestreams. They can be watched on our YouTube channel . Be sure to subscribe and click the 'bell' �� so you don't miss on any future important social care conversations from us!

https://www.youtube.com/live/C0Zo7piTqA8?si=FL2Oyb2uGtavCJJx

Our new project: Social Care Workforce Redesign in BNSSG

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 15:11:14 GMT

We are pleased to provide an update our involvement in new projects currently being undertaken by Coproduce Care (CIC) in collaboration with Care and Support West. We will be contributing to local initiatives in Social Care Workforce Redesign, and we are excited to share the project with you.

This project is running from June 2023 to June 2024. We will be working on three areas for the next 10 months all in the BNSSG region which are as follows:

1: Investigation of the Trusted Assessor Approach in Health and Social Care Systems

In this project, we are investigating the Trusted Assessor Approach in health and social care systems. The objective is to demonstrate the value of Trusted Assessors in streamlining care needs assessment, while also addressing data protection and consent concerns. Case studies will be created from local regions that have implemented this approach, to provide insights into the benefits of Trusted Assessors of reducing delays in accessing required care.

2: BNSSG Opportunities for Levy Sharing and Increasing Apprenticeships in Social Care

This project aims to identify opportunities for levy sharing in social care and increase the use of apprenticeships. The project will engage social care providers, training organizations, authorities, and other stakeholders to develop strategies, guidelines, and an implementation plan for utilizing the levy effectively and increasing the use of apprenticeships.

3: Integrated Health and Social Care: Enhancing Collaboration, Improving Quality, Shaping Models of Care, and the Future Social Care Workforce

In this project, we are evidencing the enhanced collaboration between social care providers, health services, and local authorities. By mapping existing interfaces and collaborations, we seek to identify opportunities for cross-system benefits and improved outcomes, creating recommendations for integration for BNSSG. Our research will provide valuable insights to integration and collaboration between social care and health.

At Coproduce Care (CIC), we believe that collaboration and innovation are vital for transforming social care. Through these projects, we aim to contribute to a more efficient and compassionate system. We extend our gratitude to all stakeholders, providers, commissioners, and policymakers for their invaluable support.

Thank you for your continued interest in our endeavours. We will keep you updated as the projects progresses! In the meantime, if you are doing any work in any of these key areas, please get in touch with us using the below form. Thank you!

Letter to the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

Tue, 18 Oct 2022 10:33:18 GMT

Dear Thérèse Coffey,

We wish you the best of luck on your appointment as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. Coproduce Care (CIC) is a non-profit organisation set up to democratise the social care debate. We support the voices of those working and involved in social care to influence wider decision making in the sector. Through our continued work in this area, we are writing to address some of the urgent needs of our social care workforce. We welcome your plans to set out ‘ Our plans for patients ’ to ensure our population have easier access to NHS and social care services through winter, putting the needs of patients as priority. To ensure we prioritise the health and wellbeing of our populations, and deliver the best, high-quality care possible, we need to ensure we prioritise the needs of our workforce who are at the front of delivering health and social care .

To ensure both the health and wellbeing of our population and our social care workforce, we recommend the following:

1. Improving pay for social care workers, in real terms

The Kings Fund published a report which compared the pay of social care workers to ten of the largest supermarkets. It found that nine out of ten supermarkets paid more than most social care roles. An example used is that if care worker left their role for a supermarket position at Tesco, they would see a 6.3% pay increase instantly. We have conducted many surveys, webinars, and connected with our audience on what is crucial to improving care workers working conditions and we have found that increasing pay is consistently the most crucial factor in reflecting the value of the work and high stress and responsibilities of the role . With the current cost of living crisis, this need for increasing pay is only getting more urgent. The sector currently has 100,000 vacancies , with extremely high levels of staff shortages. This affects the capacity to deliver services and the quality of care provided . Providers are struggling to recruit staff as they are competing with supermarkets and hospitality, sectors of which offer less stress and responsibility and more pay. We believe care workers are an invaluable part of our society and therefore should be paid accordingly.

We recommend:

· Introduce national pay scales that ensure care workers meet a real national living wage as a minimum . This will recognise the full contribution of social care workers make to the health of our population, and that their contribution is a real investment into our population. By increasing pay, we further increase recruitment and retention in the sector, and improve the perception of social care being a highly valuable and promising career choice.

· Facilitate efforts to develop appropriate distribution of funds. Ensuring the integration and professionalisation of care is fully realised will allow better distribution of funds resulting in higher wages which better reflects the level of skill, qualifications, responsibilities and selflessness required to work within this sector.

2. Professionalising the care system

Health and social care should be professionalised to encourage staff retention, career progression and further skill development. Professionalising care work would ensure that those working in the sector are valued and are provided with the necessary tools to provide high quality care. Currently, there is no accredited qualification for social care workers, without a standardised training process. We hosted a live stream with Gillian Keegan , who mentioned the government’s intention to create a voluntary digital care workforce hub, as well as a skill passport for all Health & Social Care workers. This is understood to allow easier identification of the workforce, including the possibility to share resources and opportunities to encourage the workforce to up-skill and develop. The skills passport would help keep track of the skills care workers have demonstrated over time, meaning career progression would be easier to identify . Whilst individual action is very important, to improve the quality of care, we urge for a standardised career and training development program for all care staff that results in an accredited qualification .

We recommend:

· Adequate pay to restore and recognise social care work as a valued profession . Extensive skills are involved in care work, and if standardised training and qualifications are implemented, security of applicable income is appropriate to these expectations. By increasing pay, care work has higher professional footing as a recognised career and role.

· Ensuring the integration of social care is fully realised . The high fragmentation of the care sector and its lack of integration with NHS services makes it challenging to implement standardised training . The governments white paper ‘ Health and social care integration: joining up care for people, places and population ’ seeks the ambition to join up social care services. We welcome this white paper and its integration policy to achieve higher quality of care and better health outcomes. This ambition requires effort and commitment to the integration at all levels, and we hope that as health secretary, fully putting this policy into practice and reaching its scope, goals, and purpose is your focus in your new role.

· Implementing standardised training, improved learning outcomes for workers, including IT, literacy, and numeracy training are addressed with sensitivity and with the voices of the workers at heart . Implementing standardised training would ensure a level of professionalism across the sector, however, must go in line with the security of increased income and security of hours of work. We must protect the wellbeing of our workforce, of which is already experiencing burn-out and exhaustion from the high pressures the sector is facing. We cannot have higher expectations of our workers undertaking standardised training without adequate pay .

We hope you agree with our recommendations and seek to ensure we continue to improve the working conditions for our social care workforce. We hope that within your post as the new Health and Social Care Secretary, you prioritise the voices of those most impacted by decision making regarding the sector.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter,

CoProduce Care

Written by: Gabriella Neal

Driving more men into social care roles

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 11:29:15 GMT

We wanted to investigate the issues around recruiting male care workers...

Why did we want to investigate this issue?

It is estimated that by 2025, 1 million more care workers will be needed to cope with the UK’s ageing population. With the shortfall the sector is facing, it is important to consider what the sector can do to increase recruitment and retention. With men only making up 18% of the workforce , efforts into male recruitment strategies could help fill these posts.

There is a widespread understanding that the difficulty in recruiting men to the sector is that it is understood as ‘women’s work’. That care work is seen as a women’s profession and that the core skills that underpin care work are ‘feminine’ such as relationship building, communication, nurture and empathy ( Read more about the gendered perception of care work in our Women’s Work blog ).

So what did we find?

Changing attitudes around care work requires a long-term solution . Andrea Marn, Marketing Sales Manager for Live Well Training Academy noted that we need to target the issue from the root, "We need to go back a bit more, the solution is targeting young men and educating them on the pluses and benefits of working in care. We need to change these attitudes and stereotypes from a young age".

It is extremely important to change attitudes that men can host these types of skills, and that these types of skills are recognised and valued. However, our understanding that this is the main reason why men are not in social care isn’t showing the full picture...

Nicola Dunn, Senior Recruitment and Retention Advisor for Devon County Council, said that "As we have been running our recruitment campaigns over the last couple of years, we have been recruiting both women and men. What we found is that men have been particularly difficult to place in domiciliary care. Providers may not have enough hours for men, so they will try and prepare runs and routes that there are enough service users who are happy to accept a male care worker."

This shows that whilst attracting more men to apply for these roles is a need, it is also required to support men throughout the recruitment process to ensure they receive the hours they want.

Nicola further went on to explain that they do receive applications from men who desire to work in domiciliary care. When designing the routes, she stated "It might not work, they might have one person and then various gaps. It is quite difficult for care providers to give them the hours that they wanted without having downtime and gaps in-between. It is quite difficult for us because we have been promoting all sorts of roles to attract all sorts of people, our promotional videos and photos include men, but when we get the applications, it’s hard to place them."

Nicola further states that as they are facing a huge workforce shortage, it is difficult to not be able to provide work for men requesting it .

Nicola also pointed out how important it is to have men in social care, "We know men in the sector are very valuable because they are often quite flexible with the hours they can work, they can work full time hours as they may not have the same childcare responsibilities as women, meaning they can be super flexible."

This information shows the wider need to properly identify the further barriers to driving men into social care, aside from the more general gender stereotypes that may hinder this aim. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, then recruitment strategies for men in care can consider the barriers and find solutions.

What is the government doing about it?

The Adult Social Care Reform White Paper recognises the need for ‘new policies that identify and support best recruitment practices locally’ and that the UK government will ‘provide support’ to this aim. There is still no news on how these aims will be developed or funded, and after our livestream with Gillian Keegan , we learnt that the specifics of implementing strategies to meet these aims are still being developed.

What do we recommend?

Currently there is no statements on the role of gender within the Adult Social Care Reform White Paper. We think that the UK government needs to consider the role of gender in recruitment and retention as a sector made up by 82% women. Whilst the sector faces mass staff shortages policy makers need to put efforts into firstly how women are bearing the brunt of this crisis and how supporting men into social care roles would support the sector and contribute to reforming gender stereotypes about social care. There needs to be targeted funding and recruitment campaigns that target improving the gender diversity in the social care workforce. We need to share stories of men who care, to dismantle gendered stereotypes that come with social care work, to bring men into the workforce!

Written by: Gabriella Neal

Our 2020 Roundup

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 12:30:22 GMT

Here are a few things we wanted to share from this year...

Coproduce Care's Annual Round Up ❗❗

It might not feel like a normal New Year's, but it's still the perfect time to look over some of our favourite moments, from livestreams to the most important findings from our social care research and anything from the other activities our team of volunteers have run this year. Thanks for getting through 2020 with us, and here's to a brighter 2021 ��

We had to learn very fast how to carry on with our interviews in the new, remote way of working. Some favourites since we started livestreaming in April:

Kate Terroni, Chief Inspectorate for Social Care at CQC joined a panel of managers and campaigners to hear our response to this year's state of care results. Watch back here:
In the summer, we had livestreams with both Cabinet Minister for Care Helen Whately MP and the Oppostion Cabinet Minister Liz Kendall MP. We think it is fun to start with Helen's first .
64 guests, 40 livestreams. 12,000 views (and almost 2000 hours of CoproCare content watched) Catch up on every video we made on our channel . **And don't forget to Subscribe if you haven't yet!**

We took your views to government at a crucial time, in reports and consultations:

The Health and Social Care Select Committee asked about social care workforce and funding in the middle of the pandemic. We surveyed you and gave a number of clear ways to develop structural support equal to the NHS whilst keeping our distinct, community identity seperate from health services. See our report as well as other submissions here .
We spoke to BAME care workers at every level to create recommendations for the National Social Care Taskforce. You can see our work and how it fed into the wider government's recommendations here .
Over a dozen surveys and online focus groups, 6 reports delivered to the public and government. 927 people working or affected by social care reached told us their views for research or consultations.

We turned everything you asked for in the Select Committee responses into dedicated #ActForCare themes.

Complete with webinars, Q&As, quizzes and so many incredible guest speakers we can't even start to list all our favourites but here's some highlights:

We finished the year with Commissioning Care: including a great history of how health and loneliness are understood across civilisations, a behind the scenes look at CCGs, and an incredible debate about alternative coop, funding and planning structures. Here is Buurtzorg and Equal Care Coop .
Care as Women's Work challenged the way women are so closely associated with unpaid and professional care. We had leaders of new economy and progressive campaign work join, watch the webinar here .

Thanks so much again for being a part of our 2020, we work in our own time to create platforms for the real stakeholders of social care and this would only happen if you continue to take part and tell us what matter to you. Get involved below, and see you next year!! ��

Coproduce Care at the Care Summit 2020: Democratising Social Care

Mon, 05 Oct 2020 15:39:29 GMT

Making your voice heard!

Probably the most important things to us at Co-Produce Care is making sure everyone’s voice is heard fairly. You have the ability to influence laws and government policies. Its normal to feel separated from the decisions our government make, but we want to show that you can make an impact, just like we have (but we are still learning every day too!).

We are presenting at The Care Summit (virtually) on Thursday 8th October at 3:10pm – Coproduce Care followers can sign up with a 20% discount here or enter ‘COCARE20’ at checkout.

We will be talking through some of the ways we have helped real people coproduce social care along with us, and how easy it is for you to do the same!!

1. Contact your MP

One of the most effective ways to raise any concerns or problems you may have is speaking to your local MP (locally elected governmental representatives). You can inform them on what you’re unhappy about and they often can help find a solution to your issue or point you in the right direction at least. But importantly, they can ask questions of the government (frequency changes due to COVID, but they will still ask!)

Not sure who your local MP is? On this webpage you will be able to enter your postcode and find your local MP: https://members.parliament.uk/members/Commons. Not sure how to contact your MP, or how to ask for what you need? Here is a governmental guide with all the answers: https://www.parliament.uk/get-involved/contact-an-mp-or-lord/contact-your-mp/.

Even if you think they know about the issue, they will always want to speak to more people and know as much as they can, so don’t hold back!

2. DIY: Make a move

This is one of the main achievements of Coproduce Care. We speak to, collaborate with, support and share conversations on care via our livestreams, social media channels and website to contribute to amplifying people’s voices. Speaking to those around you can be a useful way to find out if you’re not alone, and if others want to collaborate in raising those issues. We have managed to build a network of around 100 local providers who all join a regular Zoom call to hear updates from authorities and discuss collaborative solutions to the crisis. Once you are doing something, you’ll be amazed who it makes listen!

3. Councillors
All local authorities have elected councillors and they represent all individuals within the region. A councillors primary role is to manage and find solutions for issues raised by the community they represent. They can put pressure on local government and will know if any relevant consultation processes are going on where you are.

By just writing in your postcode you can find your councillors and contact details here: https://www.gov.uk/find-your-local-councillors

4. Local Authorities, Mayors, and Directly Elected Mayors

Local authorities are basically your local government. They are the body that runs all your local services and directly elected mayors are locally elected as the head of the government in that region. Elected mayors have responsibility for the running of local services, civic mayors (non-elected mayors) carry out ceremonial duties in the city and to chair council meetings.

They will have consultations, events open to industry or the public, and they should always want to hear about what is happening in care in their area (and support anybody doing something good).

5. All Parliamentary Groups (APPGs)

APPGs are cross-party groups that are run by Members of the Commons and Lords. APPGs connect parliamentarians and non-parliamentarians (charities or other non-government related organisations) to discuss relevant concerns, such as policy issues. There are around 700 APPGs covering every country in the world and hundreds of policy areas.

Although APPGs do not have a direct responsibility to report or change policy, they will always want evidence related to their subject, and should be able to support you with their knowledge of politics. Again, politicians always need evidence of what is actually happening on the ground.

Here is the latest register of APPGs https://www.parliament.uk/mps-lords-and-offices/standards-and-financial-interests/parliamentary-commissioner-for-standards/registers-of-interests/register-of-all-party-party-parliamentary-groups/

6. Select Committees

Select Committees are a group of politicians from the House of Commons set to deal with special investigations into specific issues, one that is very relevant is the Health and Social Care Select Committee.

They run investigations across their subject to inform law and finding recommendations, but they should always make it clear how you can submit written or oral evidence on their parliamentary website. At Co-Produce Care we spoke to over 500 care workers and submitted to one of the inquiries on Social Care: funding and workforce set out by the Health and Social Care Committee (https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/81/health-and-social-care-committee/).

Find out more about what we submitted and the Act for Care campaign that has followed after: http://www.coproducecare.com/actforcare. It’s good to keep an eye out on what inquiries are happening, if they are relevant to you and if you can submit evidence!

We hope this gives you an introduction to different ways that you can make an impact – but remember, politics is the representation of people - all you need to get started is an issue and you can get yourself heard at high levels if you know where to go!!

Theme 1: Womens Work

Mon, 17 Aug 2020 14:40:27 GMT

As part of our #ActForCare campaign we are holding a series of monthly webinars on areas concerning care work. This blog introduces concepts for our first webinar and campaign focus: how care is perceived as ‘Women’s Work’. For more details, please click here to visit our website page dedicated to the campaign. --And click here for our free 'Care as Women's Work' webinar

This two-part series will explore how the low pay of care workers is connected to how women dominate the care workforce and the high representation of non-white persons in the care workforce.

In Part 1 we will explain a feminist theory called intersectionality, coined by Kimberle Crenshaw and how it can be used as a framework to understand the situation of low pay for care workers.

In Part 2 we will apply intersectionality on how care workers labour is valued via historical narratives around care work with looking at gender and race.

We will also cover the inequalities surfacing with the COVID-19 pandemic, and how better funding to the sector is a step forward for gender and racial equality!

Introduction

The care workforce is one of the lowest paid in the UK.

The average hourly pay for care workers is currently below the basic pay rate for most UK supermarkets (Kings Fund, 2019).

A worker with more than 20 years’ experience in the sector will only see their pay rise by £0.15 an hour (Kings Fund, 2019). It is no secret that the care sector has been relentlessly underfunded for a decade, and COVID-19 has further highlighted the essential role care workers play for severely poor wages.

Perceptions and pay

We submitted evidence of a survey completed by 400 care workers to the Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into ‘Social care: funding and workforce’.

Our submission captured four themes from the responses, with the first theme as Pay, Funding and Rewards. We found that levels of pay and how it is distributed through pay scales would show value and recognition for the skills, pressure and compassion of the workforce.

76% of our respondents said that improving pay is the most crucial aspect of improving their working conditions .

To check out more information on our submission, click here

Public perceptions and attitudes surrounding care work is a key foundation to the pay, funding and commissioning of care work.

Care work is painted through media negatively, always largely focusing on the ‘negligence’ and ‘limited skills’ of the workers (Kings Fund, 2019). Largely these workers are women and have a high representation of non-white groups.

Women and women of colour are delivering the majority of our essential care services, looking after the unwell and maintaining the sustainability of our care sector but are earning ‘ poverty wages ’ (Women’s Budget Group, 2020).

Pay shows a clear message of how workers are valued . Improved pay and funding would show recognition for the care workforce. For too long, the care workforce’s compassionate nature has been taken advantage of and largely overlooked as unskilled, “women’s work”. If not addressed, the quality of care provision will be at a further crisis and continue the injustice of racial and gender equalities .

What is intersectionality?

Intersectionality was coined by feminist academic Kimberle Crenshaw , a leading academic, civil rights advocate and American lawyer. Crenshaw discussed how feminism neglects race and by doing this, discriminates against women of colour.

The term is used to show how a woman’s experience is not just defined by her gender but her race, ethnicity, sexuality, ability and more .

It shows that women are affected by multiple forms of marginalization and that white, heterosexual, able-bodied or middle-class ‘social identities’ are favoured in society . It then also describes systems of oppression, such as racism or patriarchy are discriminations against social identities.

This shows that racism would be discrimination of a racial identity, or patriarchy would be a discrimination of gender. This would mean that a black woman, could experience two systems of oppression at once : racism and patriarchy.

This image is a great example of how our identity is made up from many factors.

You can watch Kimberle herself briefly explaining it herself here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDtnfQ9FHc

and her explaining the concept in more detail on a TED Talk, if you have more time:

https://www.ted.com/talks/kimberle_crenshaw_the_urgency_of_intersectionality?language=en

How is it useful for care work?

According to the Skills for Care, State of Care report, the current care workforce is said to be made up of 83% female workers in comparison to 52% of the population and 21% BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethic) in comparison to just 3% of the population (Skills for Care, 2019).

Intersectionality is an important tool to use in policy work as it is able to consider that gender or race can be a direct barrier to accessing things like career progression, training and appropriate standards of pay . For example, our pay gap analysis research from Manor Community ( click here to visit ) found that non-white groups are more likely to stay in entry level positions and see a slower pay rise than white groups. According to the Skills for Care State of Care report, women highly-represent the workforce, but male, white workers are more likely to be in senior positions. (Skills for Care, 2019).

How is gender or race important for understanding how care work is valued?

Intersectionality can help us see how gender and race intersects with racist or patriarchal attitudes of labour . The undervaluing of care work with low pay and funding is connected to cultural attitudes of women and people of colour. We are going to be looking at this in part 2!

How can gender inequality shine a light on pay inequalities in care? (Part 2)

We have looked at pay, and how this is disproportionately impacting women and persons of colour due to the high representation of these groups in the care sector. In this blog we are using intersectionality to go deeper into gendered and racial attitudes of labour.

We will also cover how COVID-19 has highlighted the inequalities of care workers, putting themselves at risk everyday with little to no reward or recognition.

Gender

The first intersection we are looking at is gender and patriarchal attitudes of labour .

How care is perceived is embedded in the history of care and the model of a heterosexual family . In the twentieth century, ‘independent’ men were meant to provide financially (breadwinner) whilst ‘dependent’ women were meant to provide unpaid domestic work and care work. This was even reflected in policy, where care was only provided to families who could not look after those in need (Joya Misra, 2007).

It wasn’t until the 1990’s that the care of children and the elderly for work became a norm. Women were joining the workforce in huge numbers and the start of part-time work began to accommodate for mothers in the workforce. The increasing of women’s employment gave rise to policy to encompass women as independent financially, however the permanence of the man/breadwinner and woman/dependent remains very much ingrained into society.

Women still have more dependents than men and take on more unpaid domestic tasks or care responsibilities at home. Women “carry out at least two and a half times more unpaid household and care work than men” and this “subsidizes the cost of care that sustains families, supports economics and often fills in for the lack of social services” (UN Women, 2016).

The identity of care work is based upon foundations of relationship building, person-centred, compassion and nurture. These attributes have often been assigned to women under the breadwinner model (Pew Research Centre, 2018) (Liz Bondi, 2008). These types of skills are expected to be done for free and there is little appreciation for them as they are perceived as ‘natural’ to women.

This means that the sector is understood as ‘feminine’ making it ‘feminized’. This attitude works under a patriarchal system , which ‘women’s work’ is systematically undervalued and exploited with low wages . This places all people in the sector, men and women, at a severe disadvantage.

Within our recent submission to the Health and Social Care Committee’s inquiry on workforce ( click here to visit ) we found that care workers feel that the low pay they receive is because of the lack of recognition for the work they do . Our respondents felt that pay reflects how their skills are recognised. Women’s skills in particular are systematically undervalued as occupations dominated by women are paid less.

Race

The second intersection we are going to look at is race and racist perceptions of labour .

Non-white people are expected to carry out labour intensive work with little reward or recognition . Rooted in the era of slavery onto post-slavery and present day, there is embedded ideas in society that people of colour are low-wage domestic or agriculture workers (Nina Banks, 2019).

Deep seated views about the skills and competencies of non-white people is driven from racist stereotypes and attitudes of these workers.

The value of women of colour’s work is heavily tied to their lower privilege in comparison to white women. Dating back to the era of slavery, women of colour faced violence and exploitation for free care labour without having rights to their own children (Jocelyn Fyre, 2019). Black women are undervalued as mothers but are expected to carry out domestic, care-giving jobs associated with motherhood (Jocelyn Fyre, 2020).

Today, women of colour disproportionately make up the care workforce and face occupational segregation . This means they are highly concentrated in jobs with low pay, part time and unstable contracts (TUC, 2006).

Women of colour are put at an intersection of gender and race, whilst frequently having to push past negative, outdated stereotypes and beliefs on their work ethic and non-deserving of higher wages . Women of colour face these unique challenges, showing the need for intersectionality to understand the disparities not just between men and women, but women of colour and women.

Combining that care work is often undervalued anyway, that women and non-white persons highly represent the field and that women’s and non-white persons work is systemically undervalued itself, would explain a part of the under-funding of the sector.

COVID-19 and non-white staff

The current pandemic is making clear the current inequalities in the care sector and this burden of care put upon women and non-white people. Those working on the front line of the pandemic are paying the highest price . Pay and funding for care workers is not reflecting this risk with a huge concentration of workers on less than minimum wage (The Resolution Foundation, 2020).

UNISON stated that 72% of health and social care staff who have died from COVID-19 are Black (UNISON, 2020). Black African women in the UK have a mortality rate four times higher than White women (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2018). Due to the high concentration of non-white staff and women in the care workforce, the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) is disproportionately affecting these groups. Care workers are working at close proximity to the virus and not having adequate pay or access to PPE emphasizes it as an inequality issue .

Better pay means equality

A focus on the direct racial and gender biases that impact appropriate pay is vital. It is fundamental for the government to deliver funding for care services and boosting pay to advance the interests of women and non-white persons . By putting forward this action, it will show support to not just stabilizing the care system but a step towards improving inequality . Better pay and funding shows commitment to valuing the care sector and the skills of women and people of colour care workers.

If you are interested in discussing any of these topics mentioned, please come join our free webinar ‘Womens Work’ on August the 14th 12.30-1.30pm.

More details and sign up here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/act-for-care-webinar-social-care-and-womens-work-tickets-115035393960

Written by: Gabriella Neal

References

Jocelyn Fyre, 2019. Racism and sexism combine to shortchange working black women. Online: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/news/2019/08/22/473775/racism-sexism-combine-shortchange-working-black-women/

Jocelyn Fyre, 2020. On the frontlines at work and at home: the disproportionate economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic on women of colour. Online: https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/women/reports/2020/04/23/483846/frontlines-work-home/

Joya Misra, 2007. Earner-Carer Model. Online: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9781405165518.wbeose002

Kings Fund, 2019. Average pay for care workers: is it a supermarket sweep? Online: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/blog/2019/08/average-pay-for-care-workers

Liz Bondi, 2008. On the relational dynamics of caring: a psychotherapeutic approach to emotional and power dimensions of womens care work. Online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09663690801996262

Nina Banks, 2019. Black women’s labor market history reveals deep-seated race and gener discrimination. Online: https://www.epi.org/blog/black-womens-labor-market-history-reveals-deep-seated-race-and-gender-discrimination/

Pew Research Centre, 2018. Strong men, caring women. How Americans describe what society values (and doesn’t) in each gender. Online: https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/interactives/strong-men-caring-women/

Resolution Foundation, 2020. What happens after the clapping finishes? Online: https://www.resolutionfoundation.org/publications/what-happens-after-the-clapping-finishes/

Skills For Care, 2019. State of the adult social care sector and workforce in England. Online: https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/adult-social-care-workforce-data/Workforce-intelligence/documents/State-of-the-adult-social-care-sector/State-of-Report-2019.pdf

The Point, 2020. The scandal of low pay in the home care sector. Online: http://www.thepointhowever.org/index.php/issues/207-the-scandal-of-low-pay-in-the-home-care-sector#:~:text=The%20Resolution%20Foundation%20report%2C%20(Under,less%20than%20the%20minimum%20wage.

Time, 2019. What’s intersectionality? Let these scholars explain the theory and its history. Online: https://time.com/5560575/intersectionality-theory/

TUC, 2006. Black women and employment. No 56 in the TUC welfare reform series. Online: https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/black-women-and-employment

UN women, 2016. Redistribute unpaid work. Online: https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/csw61/redistribute-unpaid-work

UNISON, 2020. COVID-19: Black and female workers on the frontline. Online: https://www.unison.org.uk/news/article/2020/05/covid-19-black-female-workers-impacted-rest/

Womens Budget Group, 2020. It is women, especially low-paid, BAME & migrant women putting their lives on the line to deliver vital care. Online: https://wbg.org.uk/blog/it-is-women-especially-low-paid-bame-migrant-women-putting-their-lives-on-the-line-to-deliver-vital-care/

Don't forget to check out our Act for Care page - Click HERE to visit.

#CoproductionWeek2020 may be over but Coproduction isn’t

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 22:30:17 GMT

About a word

When we first started Coproduce Care in 2019, we realised that the term was still new to many. So we created a series of blogs aimed at shedding light on coproduction and sharing good practice.

We covered:

What is Coproduction?

Best practice links on How to Coproduce

We created a brief Coproduction Reading List (feel free to suggest additions)

As well as a list of areas we feel discussions on coproduction need to be had

But writing blogs is never enough. We struggled to get the word of coproduction out to a wider audience, so we decided to record some interviews with those in the know.

T ina Coldham, NIHR and SCIE – explained on our podcast and video how Coproduction is cultural change and how coproduced research is so important.

Cat Duncan-Rees enlighten us on the history of coproduction and practical examples of how it was being done well in social work teams. Listen back here to hear what ‘being more pirate’ ‘icebergs’ and coproduction all have in common.

When conducting research about disability, people with disability or policies which effect peole or social care, experts by experience are often left out. Our interviews with Tom Shakespeare and Catherine Needham shed some light on how coproduced research can and should be done.

Catherine Needham highlighted to us how coproduction is no easy task. Time and resource can get in the way of meaningful engagement. But pursing this aim is worth the effort and creates some of the most impactful and meaningful research. Catch up on our podcast with Catherine here .

Tom Shakespeare was inspiring not only in his international experience of coproduction, but his knowledge of the Disabled People's Movement and how research should be done. Without making a big deal about it, he told us how his research was coproduced with people with disabilities. For him, it was a no-brainer and a way of life to conduct research coproductively. Catch up on his video interview here .

But #coproductionweek (this year held between 6th - 10th July) is not just about individual perspective but how organisations can bring people together to co-create solutions. Coproduction Week is the brainchild of SCIE (the Social Care Institute for Excellence ) and gives everyone a great excuse to focus on coproduction. Here are some of our favourite shares from their twitter hashtag:

Age Better Programme in Sheffield
The Council for Disabled Children’s Participation Fact Sheets
Heart n Soul Art Project on People’s lived experience
And of course SCIE’s fantastic set of resources for CoPro Week
Along with SCIE’s collection of blogs all about #coproduction in 2020

There are many organisations who want to claim their team efforts as coproduction, but it is also important to stay focused on the different elements of coproduction and judge our efforts on where we are on the coproduction ladder. TLAP has made an accessible version here .

A huge thanks to SCIE for making last week full of ideas, successes and discussions on #coproduction. Let’s hope it spurs more and more people on to making coproduction the norm and not the exception in social care.

#Share #Subscribe #Like !

We're Going Live!! - Livestreams

sophie.chester@manorcommunity.co.uk (Sophie Chester) — Tue, 28 Apr 2020 23:01:35 GMT

Sign up to our livestreams - starting Wednesday 29th April 2020

We're going live this week with Livestreams on social care and the response to COVID19

CLICK BELOW and Subscribe, Like and Click the bell on YouTube

Wednesday Nights #MidweekWhine

Deian Glyn and David Smallacombe on 'COVID19 the new normal' - 7pm on Wednesday 29th April

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0GluPTPHL0

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/coproducecare/videos/2601585773447490/?notif_id=1587741641158436&notif_t=live_video_schedule_broadcaster

Thursday Nights - #ChatForCare at 7pm just before #ClapForCarers....

This Thursday with Belinda Schwehr, CEO of CASCAIDr on Care Act easements

Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftXcsL712Io

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coproducecare/videos/849414245538707/

#Share #Subscribe #Like !

APPG Adult Social Care “Making Sure People Have More Control In Their Lives”

Sat, 29 Feb 2020 23:58:09 GMT

A focus on coproduction and co-creation in care

On Monday we were invited to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Adult Social Care event themed “Making Sure People Have More Control In Their Lives”. Here we provide a summary.

What’s an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) anyway?

All Party Parliamentary Groups, or APPGs as they’re more commonly known, are groups of MPs and members of the house of Lords (Peers) who form informal groups which promote, discuss and campaign on particular issues. Whilst they perform an important function of bringing experts, people with lived experience and politicians together on an issue, they have no official status in parliament. There are hundreds of All-Party Parliamentary Groups (see p128 of this document):

Social care related APPGs include APPG on autism , APPG for disability and the APPG on social care . On 24th February we were invited to the APPG on adult social care event which focused on Co-Production & Co-Design and was chaired by Lord Low of Dalston (Conservative member of the House of Lords) and Labour MP Helen Hayes.

A Personal Story

The first guest speaker was Sally Percival who co-chairs the organisation TLAP and the National Coproduction Advisory partnership. Sally shared with us her deeply personal experience of creating a care team around her son and how coproduction and co-design meant that he was able to live his life not the life others chose for him. The lack of coproduction meant he would be doing activities built on assumptions which he had no interest. A coproduced support plan meant her son’s self-esteem sky-rocketed and his skills increased. He has now moved out of her home and into his own, which meant not just independence for him but a new career and life for Sally.

Sally's top tips for coproduction

For Sally, coproduction is about:

Trust
Equality
Diversity
Accessibility
Reciprocity - a message which also came out during our Coproduce Care Chat Podcast with Tina Coldham
and open minds

Sally also shared with us an image of an iceberg from Cat Duncan-Rees which fabulously illustrates the difference between co-production and co-creation.

Panel 1: “Who decides what my care and support looks like?”

The first panel tackled the question of “who decides what my care and support looks like?”. Unfortunately, there weren't any people with lived experience on this panel but there were plenty of social care advocates including Vic Rayner (Executive Director at the National Care Forum ), Kathy Roberts (Chief Executive of the Association of Mental Health Providers ), Christine Eade (Manager at The Pod, Coventry City Council ), Rachel Mason (Family Carer and Associate Consultant, Self Directed Futures ) and Steve Scown (Chief Executive at Dimensions ).

Vic Rayner pointed out that the social care system for accessing care and support is frustratingly complicated and that personal budgets are one way to enable person-centred care where care is delivered by very skilled workers. Vic gave one of the most powerful statements when she pointed out that

“Care should not just be person-centred but person-led care”

Can this be the new slogan for care ?!

The Care Act

As with many of the interviews Coproduce Care has been doing with champions of good care, Christine Eade requested that the sector focuses more on implementing the Care Act 2014 – for Christine, this should be the foundation. Rachel Mason strongly emphasised the impact of community support in enabling her to be a carer for her son’s. In Rachel’s experience it wasn’t whether care worker supporting her son had qualifications, it was whether they could provide personalised care which was key. Ultimately, personalised care enabled her to reduce paid support.

Question Time

Perhaps the most enlightening part of the afternoon’s talks was when they opened up for questions. One of the first questins came from Dr Jean Hardiman Smith – Chair of the Health and Care Committee of National Pensioners Convention ( NPC ). She explained how she heard of a person who had their bank account emptied by a personal carer and that a one size fits all for personalised budgets doesn’t work. Rachel Mason agreed that personal budgets, whilst conceptually sound, put a huge responsibility on the person if managing it themselves.

Another audience member and social care consultant, felt that if people are to take control of their care and support then the Care Act 2014’s eligibility system needs to stop and called for parity of esteem with the way we access services in the NHS.

There was a notable frustration from the audience with the lack of understanding of Independent Living and the need to define and inform social care leaders about it. The most enlightening question came from a 69 year old user of services who was also a former planning officer. He reminded us that for over 40 years there has been the disabled person’s movement of ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’.

This audience member was frustrated at the continual medicalisation of people with disabilities and assessments by professionals who, he felt, put people into boxes rather than getting to know them better. He wanted to know why the APPG discussions were not centred around the concept of POWER and why the term independent living has become a ‘no-no’ and replaced by the ‘nebulous term social care’. He wanted a focus on removing barriers and for everyone to start ‘talking to us and not about us’ (an excellent point!)

This statement fundamentally shifted the direction of the event. Steve Scown led a response from the panel by agreeing. Steve pointed out that “power needs to be placed in the hands of those being cared for”. Vic Rayner responded by stating that social care in fact needs a broader understanding of what it is meant to do.

Finally, Vic pointed out that March 22nd signals the end of the government’s first 100 days in office, a date where the Prime Minister promised cross-party talks for social care - so watch this space from Boris and #first100days

Panel 2: “How do we make best practice common practice?”

The second panel had the task of discussing “How do we make best practice common practice?”

This panel included Helen Hayes MP (Co-Chair of the APPG on Adult Social Care) , Andy Tilden (interim CEO of Skills for Care ), Issac Samuels (Member of National Co-Production Advisory Group at TLAP), James Bullion (Vice-President of ADASS ), Danielle Conway (Health and Care Worker at Manchester Community Central) and Mario Ambrosi (Director of Communications and Marketing at Anchor Hanover )

Whilst Andy Tilden felt that best practice in organisations is not replicated everywhere and the sector needs to relentlessly look at coproduction and codesign. The one and only user of services (or avoider of services as he described himself!) Isaac Samuels, talked about a rights-based approach to social care and that we have effectively lost the meaning of ‘independent living’. He also called for more transparency in local authority funding decisions asking: who’s overseeing the ‘funding panels’ and how do they work?!

James Bullion had some clear messages for social care:

The sector should be properly funded “good funding breeds good practice” - £3.5 billion is needed for the sector just stand still.
Local authorities should be open to challenge from people like TLAP .
Technology should spread good practice.
There are some great tools available which local authorities should be using such as TLAP’s and SCIE’s innovation network .
Contrary to popular opinion, James didn’t feel that the health and social care regulator CQC (Care Quality Commission) should inspect local authorities as they do other services. For James this would be an unnecessary expense
The language we use to discuss social care and disability isn’t helpful and is fractured
There should be rights based advise workers

Helen Hayes also pointed out the lack of funding as a failure of government. She agreed that the aim should be on delivery and that we should stick to ‘nothing about us without us’, with the system involving people at every stage of engagement and putting diversity at the heart. Helen felt that there should be a renewed focus on the pay for care workers and the value of relationships – something she felt isn’t, but should be, represented on the balance sheet of all organisations. Her final points included encouraging people to engage with their local members of parliament before the chancellor’s budget in March.

Question Time

During the questions section for this panel, Becky – from Shared Lives Plus asked Helen Hayes whether she had attended the Social Care Future ’s event, where people with disabilities, advocates for the sector and progressive sector leaders discussed the “language” used in our modern discourses of social care. Becky highlighted research being done involving social care futures and carried out by Lancaster University (something Neil Crowther discussed in our up and coming podcast with him). According to the research so far, using the word ‘crisis’ to discuss the care debate effectively shuts down the conversation. Suggesting that when the sector is described as being in crisis, people feel that it’s effectively a foregone conclusion and nothing else can be done. Becky pleaded to Helen that politicians start talking about other ways of framing social care.

Not quite the short summary we initially intended! But such a thought-provoking discussion and hopefully an informative blog.

The King's Fund Annual Annual Conference 27th November 2019

Fri, 29 Nov 2019 13:35:46 GMT

The King’s Fund is a leading think-tank and independent charity which holds regular health and social care event and shares research and commentary. Whilst the King’s Fund has traditionally focused on health-related topics, it is increasingly shining the light on aspects relating to social care. This is a summary of some of the talks from the first day of its two-day annual conference held in London on 27th November 2019.

This was Coproduce Care’s first time attending an annual conference held by The King’s Fund and the line-up of speakers was impressive. The morning’s breakfast session included Richard Sloggett (Former Policy Advisor for Matt Hancock), Lesley Regan (President of the Royal College of Obstetricians), Ben Jupp (Director of Policy Social Finance) and Natalie Bohm (Senior Medical Affairs from Pfizer UK). The session’s focus was on delivering population health. Richard pointed out that prevention in government is difficult and siloed and that the system lacks patient centricity. Integrated care systems on the other had will move towards a person-centred approach, as the delivery of population health cannot be delivered solely through an NHS lens.

Improving Health Locally

Nick Timmins from the Kings Fund kicked off the next session introducing his new report on ‘ Leading for integrated care ’ which has the apt subtitle of:

‘if you think competition is hard you should try collaboration’

What does it all mean?!

The panel for this first session went on to explain their tips for leading across complex health and care systems. However, a member of the audience asked a prevalent question: ‘ what’s an SHA ?’ she asked, ‘ can you all please stop using acronyms and I don’t know what you mean ’. Unfortunately for her, however the conference was full of acronyms which no one really stopped to explain.

The importance of language in effecting behaviours was pointed out by Owen Williams (Chief Executive of Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust) who mentioned that within his organisation he decided not to use the work Integrated Care System (ICS) but instead used ‘partnerships’ as that was effectively what they were creating. He explained that organisations should refrain from waiting for central government policy or action and start affecting better collaboration as well as change locally to benefit their populations. Concerns about ‘BME representation’ were also high on Owen’s list, arguing that conversations around representation should happen more frequently.

Other tips for leading complex teams such as ICS's included having a rotating Chair role and incorporating the voluntary sector throughout ICS's, a point put forward by Suffolk Family Carers Chief Executive, Kirsten Alderson .

Professor Paul Burstow (Independent Chair at Herefordshire and West Essex Sustainable Transformation Partnership) pointed out that, when working within integrated systems, people should consider whether they are going to ‘change the rules or play by the rules’ and that the challenge is often that people embarking on integrated systems often want to know the end result so that they can work towards it. However, this is often very difficult to certify when the change is developed corproductively.

According to Paul, what would be helpful is a better conversation between local government and NHS on funding.

Paul Burstow had some final quick-fire tips:

On Talent: if health and care organisations are thinking of how you are working as an integrated system, the talent within your organisation should be the bridge builders to move things forward.
On Priorities: don’t have too many!
On Governance: within his organisation they are constructing a new governance in working in NHS or as a multi-sector partnership rather than within an NHS construct. The concept of ‘looking up’ is key.
On Challenges: expecting people to effect integration within the day job, is a tough ask and is very difficult – a theme which came up a lot during the day.
On Recruitment: – Paul’s team is looking for a new leader! …….. #Spreadtheword.

Breakout sessions – the role of social care in prevention

The first breakout session we attended was on ‘the role of social care in prevention: what’s the potential and where’s the evidence?’

This session didn’t specifically focus on traditional forms of social care but was more focused on community support. The session was chaired by The King’s Fund’s Simon Bottery and included representations from Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and The Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA).

From a finance perspective, Dr Eleanor Roy (from CIPFA) pointed out that over half of most local authorise budgets are spent on social care and that the barriers to prevention were a lack of long term commitment which lasts longer than a term in government. In comparison to health, social care faces a higher bar for preventative outcomes and that there is often a push for cash incentives.

One of the most uplifting talks came from the team at West Yorkshire and Harrogate ICS. Karen Coleman explained how they had developed some fantastic campaigns to tackle loneliness in their area which resulted in 46,000 people taking part to support their community members suffering from loneliness. With a heart-warming message of ‘looking out for our neighbours’ we were shown case studies and stats of how this approach has created benefits across the local community.

Find out more here: https://www.wyhpartnership.co.uk/application/files/3215/5428/0490/Loneliness_case_study.pdf

Ewan King (Chief Operating Officer for SCIE) discussed SCIE’s work with Think Local Act Personal and mapping the fantastic innovation carried out by community groups as represented on their community-centred support directory resource (see below and access online here ). The aim is to create a resource whereby Commissioners can find out about new and innovative approaches to care and support for adults and providers and people with lived experience can see what’s going on locally and nationally.

Ewan explained how organisations such as the Red Cross , Key Ring and Cares family have already interacted with the directory and are sharing great practice by tackling isolation, making savings helping people to achieve their goals.

What we felt was a lesser known but very interesting part of Ewan’s talk was SCIE’s Social Care Innovation Network . Ewan explained that this aims to find out what works and what people need to do when ensuring integration happens. Well worth a look.

We asked the question at the end of the session of:

“what is the definition of social care?”

Apparently, this is too big a question and needs a whole session to answer it! Give us your comments…..maybe this should be a topic for a ‘Coproduce Care Chat’ for YouTube??

Manifesto – Which Party for Health and Social Care?

The post lunch session kicked off with a session on the parties’ pledges on health and social care. The panel included the Kings Fund experts such as Siva Anandaciva , Suzie Bailey , Andrew McCracken and Sally Warren . This session was packed full of facts and information too detailed to mention here. When asked by the audience which party overall had the best policies for health and social care, the panel felt that labour was by far the most favourable, with the caveat that the liberal democrats also had a few good policy points, yet all parties' policies on health and social care had their downsides. They pointed out that Labour recognised the wider dominants of health and care and that it was encouraging to see a party put their neck on the line by offering free personal care for over 65's. Whilst the Conservatives pledge for £1 billion was in fact split equally between adult and children services. They pointed out that Liberal Democrats put social care as one of the priority areas for council tax and had a policy to reach out to rural areas.

If you find this brief summary on election manifestos lacklustre - Never fear, the Kings fund is doing two great things over the coming days:

Releasing a podcast to discuss the manifestos
Releasing a manifesto grid to help voters navigate the health and social care manifesto quagmire (yippee!).

Inequalities in health and care

The last session, before a well-deserved drinks reception, included a mind-blowing talk from Professor David R Williams (Professor of Public Health and Chair Department of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Harvard University). We’ve heard from Professor Williams before at the NHS Confed and much of his talk similarly centred around detailing emotive facts and effects of inequality.

Professor Williams reminded us of:

the experiences of discrimination are a source of toxic stressed suffered by marginalised groups in health and social care workforce
people dying young because of societal inequalities and access to services
the resultant high numbers of infant mortality and postnatal depression
the effects of institutional racism.

He explained an excellent example of a health organisation addressing the other determinates of ill health. A hospital in the US created legal-medical partnerships, whereby if health issues such as asthma were caused by poor housing maintenance their legal partners would contact the person’s landlord or landlady to remind them of their legal obligations to their tenants.

Another organisation used electronic inhalers to monitor when and where people used their medication to identify geographical hotspots and crowdsourced innovations so that trucks were re-routed, trees planted and areas targeted for high pollution.

For more on Professor Williams: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/david-williams/

Another great conferences, packed with information. Hope our brief summary has given you a flavour!

#staytuned #share #CoproduceCare #blogs #democratise the #caredebate

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

Care England Conference 13th November 2019

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 15:47:01 GMT

Integration, technology, politics, coproduction and leadership. All of this was covered in today's Care England Conference. Fear not if you couldn’t make it as we have blogged below the best bits from Andrea Sutcliffe , Chief Executive of the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Professor Martin Green from Care England , Kate Terroni from CQC and more.

Contents

Andrea Sutcliffe - NMC

Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive of Telecare Services Association

Kate Terroni - tips from the Regulator

Professor Martin Green #GoldenNuggets

Care England's Conference in Westminster focused on Workforce. Chaired by Professor Martin Green OBE – Chief Executive of Care England, the line up included representation from providers, senior leaders and academics.

Andrea Sutcliffe

After a short intro from Professor Green, Andrea kicked off with a focus on the needs and value of nurses who work in social care – a group who she felt were frequently under-valued and underrepresented. Andrea hits her 10 month anniversary at the helm of Nursing and Midwifery Council ( NMC ) this autumn and was keen to set out what the organisation is and does, as well as its focus for 2020 and beyond.

What the NMC is and does

Andrea reminded us that the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) shapes the practice of nurses, midwives and nursing associates through:

• Setting standards via their Code and Future Nurse standards.

• Maintaining a register so people can check whether someone is registered as a nurse.

• Supporting re-validation and ensuring someone’s fitness to practise as a nurse.

Some of the key impact changes she hopes to make in her role include changing the NMC website so that it is less London-centric and promoting the fact that there are over 40,000 nurses working in adult social care who are increasingly looking after people with multiple needs and higher expectations.

Andrea pointed out that nurses in adult social care are often isolated yet have unique skills in addition to their clinical abilites such as managing staff teams.

NMC – 2020 and beyond

After receiving over 4,000 survey responses, NMC have developed 5 new themes including:

• A dynamic approach to shaping practice

• Building their relationship with the public

• Strengthening their relationship with professions

• Using and sharing research, data and intelligence

• Closer collaboration with others

Effectively, NMC are looking to support the public to know more about them and their role.

Andrea pointed out that the focus on intelligence comes from the fact that ‘ we sit on a goldmine of evidence and we need to use our insight ’ to influence and shape the health and care system for the better.

We look forward to seeing the full strategy next year when it is published.

Check out more from NMC on their website and twitter .

Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive of Telecare Services Association

“ Using technology to promote autonomy, enable connectivity and improve quality”

Next up was Alyson Scurfield , the Chief Executive of Telecare Services Association (TSA). TSA describe themselves as the representative body for technology enabled care (TEC) services and work on behalf of and advising organisations such as telecare and telehealth providers, suppliers, housing associations, care providers, emergency services, academia, charities, government bodies and health and social care commissioners.

Her message is that technology needs to be the lifeblood of how we deliver care and yet currently 1 in 5 care homes still don’t have WiFi!

She explained that:

‘Gone are the days when we sit in a room around a recorder and listen to Vera Lynn’.

By all means listen to Vera Lynn! but on your own terms using technology which suites your needs not the home's.

She introduced us to some enlightening stories of how organisations are using tech, such as a digital vertical map. Using technology in a personalised way was key. Check out their resources and a document relaying their experiences of enabling technology in care on their website.

TSA works closely with Care England and going forward they will be doing short videos on training staff to use technology and be innovative through NVQ style levels 1 and 3, something that will be launched by next year’s conference.

Kate Terroni – a focus on Leadership

We have written about a talk from Kate Terroni which we were recently attending in October. However, what struck us at this event was how she opened up about her journey into care and focused on the impact and role of leadership within the health and social care sector.

Kate discussed her first foray into care from the age of 19. This lead to her becoming a person-centred planning director in her 20's. Kate’s experience of being inspected by CQC as a director of adult social care will resonate with many managers. This is also true of the self-reflection that occurred when she received a less than favourable inspection report on her services.

In her current role at CQC her 3 main priorities are:

1. Voice of lived experience.

2. Joined-up care.

3. Innovation.

The main thing that came across in this talk was how serious Kate is about learning about the lived experiences of people involved in care. She explained to us that she will be joining some care staff on their duties and will be shadowing them from the start of their shift at 7 am. By doing this she has seen staff's passion for care at all levels.

She also highlighted that as a sector, we are very modest about the change we are making in people’s lives and needed to shout out more about the positives like how Social Care Future are starting to change the narrative.

Recent CQC State of Care Report

One of Kate’s main focuses from CQC’s recent State of Care report was on how people access the services they need. The report revealed that 1.5 million people don’t have the care and support they need to properly meet their needs, which is especially an issue for people with mental health and care needs. The biggest problem is when the right services don’t exist in their area or in the community they want to live in, so people end up being moved to places where there isn’t a focus on getting them back home.

A tip for Outstanding

Integration

Kate emphasised the value of organisations working together. Evidence of integration or collaboration is something which CQC inspectors will be actively looking for. The aim is to show how new ways of working together are enabling people to receive seamless care . So again, as a theme running through the conference, the user experience is key.

They will also be looking at how organisations are connecting with the community and how they are operating outside of their normal work to improve care.

Continuous Improvement

For those who are looking to get to the outstanding rating in social care, Kate mentioned that the focus should be on constant improvement, even when services have already reached Outstanding.

When 'exceptional' becomes the norm....

The question is, what does that continuous improvement look like? And will every inspector value ‘improvement’ in the same way? This was a question brought up during the Q&A session.

A member of the audience said they found that, whilst their inspector recommended his service be rated Outstanding and had mentioned that the service was exceptional, the CQC reviewing team decided that their care was in fact not ‘exceptional’ and removed the word ‘exceptional’ from the report no less than 12 times, where it had occurred in the original draft.

Whilst not addressing the question of transparency in CQC rating directly, Kate did hint that changes are afoot and six months into her role she is still in the early stages of making those changes. #watchthisspace!

A nod to CQC Publications

Kate also used the opportunity to highlight some of the other great publications by CQC , especially the one on medication errors which she plans to focus on in the new year.

A big THANK YOU from her to you

Finally, Kate gave us all a message to pass on and that was a massive thank you to all those doing care work who often do not get the recognition #spreadtheword

Professor Green's Golden Nuggets

One of our favourite talks, of course, came from the event’s chair and renowned straight talker, Professor Martin Green. Due to the pre-election period where there are restrictions on what members of parliament can say (aka purdah), Martin had to fill in for some of the original speakers.

His contribution focused on what needed to change within the care sector and as usual he did not hold back on his views.

These included:

Redefining integration

The integration of health and social care systems and practices is care's new(ish) buzzword. However, Martin wanted to redefine our understanding of the term. For him, what should be the holy grail of integration is not the systems or processes, but the experience which the people who use services receive.

Rhetoric

We need to change the rhetoric of social care, which traditional forms of media fail to do, by highlighting the negatives rather than the positives of social care (maybe Coproduce Care has a role in improving this??).

The public/private/charitable binaries

Martin felt that the debate on whether there should be more support for charitable organisations or less support for private organisations was fundamentally an academic one. For those receiving support, the main focus is their experience, not the constitution of the organisation providing it. He felt that as a sector we ought to focus on being ‘sector neutral’. The private/public/charity debate was immaterial for people receiving care, instead what is important are the relationships and outcomes received. For Martin:

‘our role is about delivering outcomes not about whether something fits into a certain political structure’

On the subject of politics, Martin felt that we needed to work in a cross-party way in order to solve the issues of social care.

Reputation

Martin pointed out that, whilst social care often gets a significant amount of bad press with panorama, BBC news and other reports on social care, some of the largest and most severe injustices are in fact in health and the NHS. This is despite the NHS spending £100,000 a minute on training . He pointed out that when independent reviews are carried out on serious incidents, the solution commonly point to training, when in fact it is the values within health and social care which need to be emphasised and that:

‘ training is not in and of itself a mechanism to deliver quality to people who use our services’

��

Rather than training being a panacea to the issues faced by organisations, we need to be evaluative of the difference our training has made to people’s lives and invest in evidencing the impact of training.

The question we should be asking is, when we invest in training, is it having an effect on the quality of care or providing a comfort blanket to senior management?

Essentially, training should be about openness and innovation . We should train people for outcomes not just processes.

Careers in care are a possibility

Lastly, Martin pointed out that we need to start seeing and promoting social care as a viable option for those wanting a career (in anything). Crucially, it’s one of the few things you can still say there is a job for life. Local authorities and education have a key role in promoting that.

Lastly, Rachel Smith, Head of Business Systems and Management Information at Orchard Care Homes, gave some fantastic insights into how their organisation has developed their own technology enabled system to revolutionise how they operate and provide more effective and efficient care.

Hope you enjoyed our summary. Please feel free to comment, share and like :-)

#staytuned #share #CoproduceCare #blogs #democratise the #caredebate

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

The Care Show Birmingham

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 10:35:52 GMT

Yesterday, we were lucky enough to attend the Care Show in Birmingham, an annual two-day health and social care conference held to showcase new initiatives, technologies and products for the sector. Key to the conference is its talks and debates from care industry leaders. Whilst we were only able to attend part of the event, in the interest of opening up the care debate, we are blogging about what we learnt. Please feel free to #share.

David James – Head of Adult Social Care Policy at the CQC

One talk which care providers may find particularly interesting is that from David James at Care Quality Commission ( CQC ). Having worked for the CQC for 13 years, David was well qualified to inform us on CQC’s current approach to technology in homecare services during his talk at the UKHCA Theatre.

Benefits of technology

David explained that CQC was committed to recognise the benefits of technology. The feedback from inspectors included that technology can:

Promote independence
Enhance care
Be an important communication tool and
Support information sharing with others
Support person-centred practices

Essentially, if used well, technology can be a key indicator of innovation by providers. Their definition of innovation is:

David cautioned that whilst technology is, in essence, positive, the interests of the people being supported must be key to the choice, introduction and use of technology. People must be at the heart not just the receiving end of organisation’s use of the technological.

There are however, challenges in using technology. There must be continuous learning within organisations and technology is not a panacea - its benefits should be assessed against the characteristics of the CQC ratings.

His final message was that technology is great, but ultimately it must be linked to the quality of care technology for its own sake.

Next steps for CQC in this area:

Andy Begley, Director of Adult Services & Housing, Shropshire Council

Andy Begley gave an enlightening talk about how technology in care is helping to keep people safe. He discussed considering collecting data on who is living alone, not going out and not accessing services and comparing this with data on how likely they might be to need services. This would then inform the local authority’s decision to support people before they require support services. It was refreshing to hear a director of adult services question the way in which commissioning currently works and to persist with better use of data and better working between local authorities to make services more responsive. Read more about his work in a recent article .

Andy’s work on using data to predict when vulnerable older people might need support in their home and to intervene in people’s lives before a crisis occurs seems a perfect fit to Matt Hancock’s prevention vision . He revealed that there is a huge amount of data which can be collected from people’s lives, such as who is not paying council tax and how this can be used to consider uncovering hidden support needs. Councils might want to consider analysing the data rather than sending out warning letters? Could it have resulted from mental health issues or money management support needs?

Fundamentally, however, collecting more data on people’s lives and sharing this data amongst local authority departments and between local authorities themselves might seem like a good idea, but the issues of GDPR were discussed as a fundamental problem, not least because of people’s misunderstanding of what GDPR means for organisations.

Karolina Gerlish, CEO of NACAS (national association of care and support workers)

“ We have to improve the image of careers in health and social care. Until people are faced with it, they don’t know what social care is”

One of the most anticipated talks was from the enthusiastic Karolina Gerlish from NACAS . Karolina made a clear link between her message and the fact that she was speaking on National Mental Health Awareness day. However, she was not speaking about mental health from the perspective of the mental health patient but from the perspective of care workers. She focused on research carried out by NACAS with care workers.

NACAS has found that:

80% of the 600 care workers questioned said that they had suffered from burnout.
Only 48% of people felt that they could pay for their basic needs expenses from the wage they received, signifying that there is an issue with economic well-being as well as mental well-being when working in care.
Most also felt that their pay did not allow them to pay for a holiday.

Karolina reminded us that, each September, NACAS support ‘national care workers day’ – an event they started. The aim was for organisations to do something special for their care workers and for everyone to recognise what care workers do.

They are also campaigning heavily for the recognition of care work as a profession.

One of the impressive points from Karolina, however, was that those working in care long term should be recognised as experts, not people lacking ambition. NACAS has also suggested recommendations to improve care work for care workers, including:

appropriately funding providers so that this can trickle down to care workers
to have social care funded at least on a par with health care
Karolina pointed out that Mental Health First Aid training should be shared not only to people in relation to those being supported, but also for staff to spot mental well-being being a priority for their colleagues.

Her final and arguably most poignant point was that providers (and arguably commissioners) need to show appreciation for care workers. Giving positive feedback such as the small messages of thanks, cards of appreciation and recognition, can help towards mental well-being and turnover rates.

Check out their full report here .

Digital Social Care

For those new to the Digital Social Care platform, Claire Sutton (Digital Transformation Lead at the National Care Forum) gave us a comprehensive introduction. Launched earlier this summer, Digital Social Care is made up of a group of social care organisations who realised that support for the social care sector to embrace, fund and understand technology is lacking. So, made up of Care England , National Care Association , National Care Forum , Registered Nursing Association , Skills for Care , UKHCA and the Voluntary Organisation Disability Group (VODG), Digital Social Care is set to reform social care’s confidence and competence around technology through its online informative platform.

Some key messages included:

Digital social care want to hear about technology case studies, but from a care provider perspective. The aim is to support providers to learn from each other.
GDPR causes a stress to many, but shouldn’t. Her message on GDPR was that it’s about applying the rules we already have around technology to the specific rules within GDPR. Effectively, we’re already doing good stuff around technological safety, we just need to evidence and practice it more effectively.
The Digital Social Care website has guidance on how to complete their ‘ data security protection toolkit ’. One of the key benefits when providers complete the toolkit is that they receive an NHS secure email which, amongst other benefits, allows providers to contact professionals within the NHS securely.
There is a ‘special interest group’ with about 100 providers who they consult with on the projects they are promoting. If you feel you should be in that group, then email them.
One great resource is information on funding opportunities to either adopt, promote or understand technology in care. Check out new opportunities here for medium sized companies and here for small care company funding opportunities #bookmark!

Our short and very partial visit revealed some fantastic insights into the ever-developing area of health and social care. For a complete list of the contributors we missed, check out the Care Show’s agenda on their website .

Maybe see you there next year? Maybe not. Either way, passes are free, travel is discounted and if we are there, we’ll let you know what happened!

#staytuned #share #CoproduceCare #blogs #democratise the #caredebate

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

Event by the King’s Fund: Community is the best Medicine

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 13:49:29 GMT

Making a reality of community-based health

The King’s Fund is a leading think-tank and independent charity which holds regular health and social care events, shares research and commentary. Whilst the King’s Fund has traditionally focused on health-related topics, it is increasingly shining the light on leadership and community developments in social care. This latest event on community-led care and support is an example of this. We were lucky to attend. See our blog summary below.

The aim of this event was to share good examples of how communities were created and supported to maintain sustainable healthcare improvement to their citizens and to share the resulting outcomes achieved and capacity building.

After an introductory session, events at The King’s Fund are typically split up into break-out sessions. Whilst we weren’t able to attend all of these, here are our main take-aways.

The plenary session was chaired by The Kings Fund’s David Buck (senior fellow specialising in public health and health inequalities). David pointed out that as a country we are living longer yet are less healthy. Whilst this is nothing new, the concept of population health is possibly a less familiar concept to non-health professionals. David reminded us that population health is one of the key focuses of The King’s Fund’s work and concerns the intersection (see the purple section below) between health behaviours, systems, the wider determinants of health and communities. Today’s event was focusing on the latter.

Next, Professor Jane South , National Adviser on Communities from Public Health England, started us off with a look back at the reviews considering the benefits of assets within our communities. She reminded us of the literature over recent years, which builds up the academic and policy case for better community-centred approaches to improve health and reduce inequalities, such as:

The Marmot Review – ‘Fair Society, Healthy Lives’
Public Health England – ‘ From evidence into action: opportunities to protect and improve the nation’s health ’
NHS – ‘ Five Year Forward View ’
HM Government – Civil Society Strategy: Building A Future that Works for Everyone .
National Voices – ‘ New Model Partnership people and communities ’

Her message was to consider how health benefits and services can be delivered ‘with’ rather than simply ‘to’ people.

Hot off the press! (well almost) is Jane’s announcement that Public Health England’s new publication for November 2019 on taking a whole system approach to community-centred public health.

For more detail on the topics covered in Jane’s talk visit:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-inequalities-place-based-approaches-to-reduce-inequalities/place-based-approaches-for-reducing-health-inequalities-main-report

Next up was Tony Cooke , Chief Officer at Leeds Health Partnership Team.

Tony was a talking point for much of the event as he married the theory and research of community work with the reality and outcomes for people in communities. With a focus on how socioeconomic and structural issues adversely impact the health of children and adults living in poverty, Tony introduced us to some interesting stats. These included the statistic that, in the area he covers, 1 in 5 children live in poverty and 76,000 households claim at least one welfare benefit. Therefore, the focus needed to be in improving the health of the poorest the fastest. Therefore, Leeds started to look at those in ‘isolated areas’ moving these areas out of adverse inequalities.

Fiona Flowers at Macmillan Local Area Partnership Programme (MLAPP)

Fiona introduced us to the way the MLAPP had driven coproduction in linking health and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). There were some fantastic examples here of coproduction and how to start, continue and complete coproductive ways of working such as:

Coproduction working groups where all the professionals involved had to report to a coproduction governing group with experts by experience.
Job specification and agreed ways of working coproductively within the group including terms of reference
Mentoring facilitators

Zereen Rahman-Jennings continued this theme with a presentation on the work carried out by Tower Hamlet's Living with Cancer Programme with examples of how services were changed. See a YouTube video of a previous talk she did here . Zereen valued the benefits of mapping which assets there are within the community and how they interact . She surmised that coproduction can be messy. Her attempts to create a coproduction group initially resulted in an inability to get the same people in the same room on a regular basis to coproduce the project. She revealed that there is more success to be had with more informal processes of gathering interested individuals to develop.

One of the most interesting talks was by Ken Kanu. Ken is the Director of Help On Your Doorstep , an organisation aiming to improve the health and well-being of isolated people in Islington. For Ken, ‘the community is in a better situation to deliver services’. Through their ‘Good Neighbour Scheme’ (GNS) which was ‘hyperlocal’, co-ordinated by paid community workers and included resident involvement produced outcomes such as:

82% of people feeling happier, people feeling more connected and closer to others
79% felt their health had improved and
74% felt more connected with their neighbours.

During the afternoon workshop, we heard from Alex Fox from Shared Lives Plus , an organisation which supports people to care for people with care needs in their own homes. Alex revealed the important work TLAP was doing around promoting coproduction, something they describe as shared living. He also posited a new way of empowering communities by switching the way power dynamics in service delivery are funded and provided to the community that needs support, rather than the top-down external services. He signalled to the work carried out by TLAP ( Think Local Act Personal ) in their rainbow diagram. Access this dynamic tool and understand who has signed up to and is using it here .

Alex shared that his new book ‘ A New Health and Care System ’ sets out an original alternative to the current care and health services systems with examples of how the Shared Lives model provides both humanity and care on a sustainable and scalable level.

Later, Kathy Martin , Strategic Impact Manager from Northern Ireland Community Development and Health Network , shared the importance of taking action on the social determinants of health.

Her work included supporting people across all of the determinants below, with a focus on pharmacy. Her work recognised the community standing of pharmacists and the network’s funding supported pharmacists to come away from the shop floor and into the community to work.

One of the final talks included messages from Ingrid Abreu Sherer, a Well-being and Civil Society Lead on, of course, well-being and Dr Tim Chadborn (head of behavioural insights at Public Health England) on the benefits of considering behaviours in health and social care.

Ingrid shared some insights, including some well-recognised information that childhood experiences, health and financial security are key determinants of well-being. She also enlightened the room with her take on how well-being changes over time, with middle age showing a key dip in life satisfaction.

Dr Tim Chadborn encouraged us to consider the myriad of actors within health and social care relationships and how their behaviours will be different across the system, such as volunteers, organisations and systems and how these may or may not contribute to improved social support. He introduced the idea of doing systems thinking from a behavioural perspective.

Snooping

We couldn’t help ourselves but to snoop around The King’s Fund library during our break. It turns out it’s pretty extensive – as you’d expect from a think-tank. Interestingly, we stumbled upon a book on patient involvement from back in 2003. It turns out coproduction and involvement really isn’t that new after all!

Overall, a fantastically informative day and as always, a wealth of information. Check out their website for more on The King’s Fund events , blogs and publications . Their events come at a cost, but any which we attend, we will blog / tweet as always, for knowledge share and (of course) to open up the care debate!

Comment below in anything you found interesting in this conference summary and as usual feel free to share.

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

The Bi-annual conference for NHS Employee Wellbeing

Mon, 07 Oct 2019 12:07:58 GMT

In September we attended the Westminster Insight bi-annual conference for NHS Employee Well-being to hear from trailblazing front line professionals including, NHS leaders, the Royal College of Nursing, Skills for Health and Health Education England on how to improve mental health and well-being provisions for your employees. In our quest to open up the care debate, read our summary of the conference here.

The event was chaired by Sir John Burn (Chair of Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and non-executive director of NHS England). The first talk, by Simon Gregory, reminded us of the Tea and Empathy Facebook page which provides informal peer support for NHS staff and describes itself as a national, informal, peer-to-peer support network aiming to foster a compassionate and supportive atmosphere throughout the NHS. He also highlighted that whilst people in the NHS often focus on supporting others, it is often their own staffs’ personal comfort which suffers as a result with around 38% of staff missing a meal break during their working week and mainly clerical staff suffering in terms of well-being.

In line with a key recommendation made in the Health Education England’s (HEE) NHS Staff and Learners’ Mental Wellbeing Commission report , there has been increasing pressure to introduce well-being guardians into the NHS for NHS staff. A well-being guardian would be a dedicated person, trained to recognise and support staff when they are experiencing difficulties. NHS Improvement and HEE are looking at taking this forward with a group led by Dr. Paul Litchfield.

Professor Pauline Walsh, Pro Vice Chancellor (Health and Wellbeing) and Executive Dean, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, Keele Univeristy and, Chair of Education Forum Royal College of Nursing.

Pauline focused her talk on the well-being of medical students. She highlighted that students are ill equipped for the clinical placements and heavy workload which face them after medical school. She also pointed to the social isolation in education.

In terms of student health, the Pauline pointed out that the Universities UK (UUK) Step Change Programme led by professor Steven West at the University of the West of England (UWE) considers mental health in terms of a whole university approach such as the individual support provided to students and community support. She also suggests that institutions should:

See students as individuals not just data.
Realise that managing transitions from university to the NHS are vital and that this is best achieved through a partnership approach with students and university and clinician placements.
Recognise the need to accept difference and diversity.

Pauline also elaborated on what they are doing at Keele University which include to support health student’s mental health. This included:

NHS staff and learners mental wellbeing support
HEE RePAIR Programme. RePAIR stands for Reducing Attrition and Improving Retention project. It has enabled Health Education England (HEE) to gain an in-depth understanding of the factors impacting on healthcare student attrition and the retention of the newly qualified workforce in the early stages of their careers.
Supporting UUK Stepchange

Lynn Demeda, Director of Workforce Programmes

The morning session concluded with an interesting case study talk from Lynn Demeda , Director of Workforce Programmes, Guy’s and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust. Lynn was passionate about concentrating on changing workers' experiences, spurred on by the fact that only 55% of staff surveyed were happy with the flexible working arrangements available, which she felt was not good enough.

Lynn surmised that, whilst we care for our patients, we need to support our staff in the same way and that there needs to be person centredness in this approach as ‘one size does not fit all’. For her, the biggest thing that helped improve organisational culture in NHS, is a human conversation and feeling comfortable about talking.

Some of the things they’re doing in her hospital includes improvements to people practices such as:

Focusing on values and behaviours.
Human conversations rather than formal processes, senior managers being given time to have coffee with their staff
There should be a deeper focus on staff data/feedback/survey and complaints.
People coming together to solve issues, such as talking about bullying and speaking truth to power and making senior leaders see things from a different perspective (this sounds a lot like coproduction to us!).

A recurring theme was allowing people to take a break, supporting work life balance and her summary was that people working in health should be curious about data and understand what staff think. They should also recognise that small things can be an impact such as overnight food for doctors, review of the ‘good work standards’ and digital well-being initiatives.

The afternoon session started with a panel which included Dr Benedict Eccles from Skills for Health , Professor Wendy Reid (Director for Education and Quality Health Education England) and Professor Dinesh Bhugra CBE (president of the BMA council).

Dr Benedict Eccles from skills for health felt that NHS Employee well-being was an ongoing issue which felt a bit like déjà vu or what he termed to be a ‘festival of words’ whereby the issue of well-being and mental health of staff had been something which, having been identified several decades ago, has yet to be solved, but continues to be discussed.

Professor Wendy Reid mused that the NHS should have a personalised training programme as a right for staff. Whilst not directly linked to well-being, a question from the audience about admission into the profession being strict and contributing to staffing issues prompted Wendy to reveal some potential changes afoot. She pointed out that currently 27% schools do not teach chemistry and there is growing support to open up psychology to the admissions criteria so that it is seen on a par with chemistry, which could have a significant impact to student numbers. At the moment, school leavers need (in the previous GCSE grading) 3 A's and an A* in chemistry. This could all change.

Professor Dinesh spoke of some alarming statistics from an international survey including 12 countries, regarding the mental health and well-being for trainees and qualified medics. It found that 88% of respondents felt that they had suffered burn-out. Other findings included that a lot of the issues were structural, there had been a mechanisation of medicine and that for him, we ought to revisit ‘medicine’s social contract’. He discusses the idea of medicine’s social contract in more detail here .

Comment below in anything you found interesting in this conference summary and as usual feel free to share.

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

Intro Series No.4: Getting hands on with the biggest topics

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 13:23:44 GMT

Let's #CoproduceCare - Democratising the care debate & uncovering the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care.

This series of blogs will explain what coproduction is, what Coproduce Care plans to do and to explore good examples of coproduction. In blog 1 we aimed to define coproduction, blog 2 aimed to give a taster of some good moves being made by organisations to promote coproduction. Blog 3 provided a starter coproduction reading list. This, the last of our series of introductory blogs, will set out a list of the most important topics for Coproduce Care to focus on in widening the care debate.

Coproduce Care – what should we discuss?

If you’ve read our blogs, popped onto our website or had a chance to engage with our YouTube videos, you may have got the sense that Coproduce Care is passionate about opening up the care debate, democratising health and social care law and policy decision-making and supporting people to have their voices heard by health and social care leaders.

One of the ways we hope to do that is to focus on certain topics rarely discussed in any depth in regular media. Whilst our parliament is tied up in Brexit Bonanza, we’d like you to help choose themes to focus on in the health and social care debate. We have come up with some of the biggest topics we work around and would welcome ideas to add to these.

We also welcome people who we are interested in being part of a 'Coproduce Care Chat' YouTube interview, Podcast or Guest Blog, Facebook or Twitter chats and Vox Pops. This platform is for you, help make it work as well is it can.

Here is our list of themed health and social care debates. Let us know what you think...

1. Equalities and inclusion in Care

We felt it would be good to discuss how different groups who work in care are represented and supported (or not) in their careers. These include the different career experiences and desires of diverse demographics like women, men, BME, BAME, younger and older people entering and working in the healthcare sector

2. Inequalities in health and social care provision

There are some statistics that show that certain groups of people appear to be over or under represented in care services, such as black men in mental health hospitals across certain areas of the country. Other signs of inequality might include how the Solami community are worked with to engage with Autism as a condition or how black carers or the travelling community are supported.

3. LGBTQ+ community and care

Recent research has shown that people who identify with being LGBTQ+ in any way still face discrimination in care services and in the wider community when they also have a disability.

4. Technology and Care

There is often a question of how and to what extent technology is a benefit or an intrusion into peoples lives within care. This might include Assistive Technology (AT), CCTV cameras, cybersecurity and the development and progress of the recently launched NHSX.

5. Integration

There is a recent history of examples of integration following the NHS long-term plan such as Strategic Transformation Partnerships, Primary Care Networks and the focus on integrating health and social care systems, and what this might look like in the future. We would like to open up the debate on this.

6. Disabilily Rights Law

There is a little known UN Convention on the Rights of Person’s with Disabilities which focuses on equality, autonomy and dignity (amongst other things) for persons with a disability and demands countries signed up to the convention make changes to their laws, policies and services to reflect this commitment. There is much that the UK is not doing and does not comply with this Convention in many ways. We would like to raise people’s awareness of this convention (of which Baroness Hale has been a promoter in the past) and start a professional and people’s debate on how we change the way health and are is delivered to be more in line with this.

7. Social-prescribing

Social prescribing is increasingly being discussed as a panacea to GP waiting lists and in general a way of improving health without medication. But what is it? Does it work? And who is doing it well?

8. Coproduction or Co-production

What is it? Who is doing it well and why is it important?

9. Workforce Development

With the advent of integrating health and social care, there is a renewed focus on comparing the social care workforce to that of health and how the social care workforce may (or may not) benefit from some of the standard benefits offered to staff working in NHS or health. This might include registration or training to 'professionalise' the workforce, workforce pay and benefits and changing the public perception (as promoted by mainstream media) of social care.

10. Government consultations

What are they? Who manages them? And how can the public and those involved in and effected by care, get involved in shaping health and social care law by engaging in government and policy consultations.

These are (literally) our starter for ten. Get in touch with who you think could answer some of these questions, whether we should be looking at other areas or whether you have a view on anything we’re doing.

And as always...

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

Intro Series No.3: Coproduction Reading List

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 13:23:43 GMT

Let's #CoproduceCare - Democratising the care debate & uncovering the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care.

These series of blogs will explain what coproduction is, what Coproduce Care plans to do and to explore good examples of coproduction. In blog 1 we aimed to define coproduction, blog 2 aimed to give a taster of some good moves being made by organisations to promote coproduction. This blog will provide a reading list for the ‘coproductive curious’.

Coproduce Care Reading List

For all those ‘Coproduction’ boffins interested in the academic and policy arguments around coproduction. Here is a starter for ten reading list. We’ll keep this updated so let us know if there’s something we should add at: hi@coproducecare.com

In this post you’ll find information on:

Coproduction literature - Good example links - Promoters of coproduction

Coproduction Literature

We’ve tried to reference as many publicly available documents as possible, however where they aren’t we have included some google scholar page links.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF), 2005

Co-production: A Manifesto for Growing the Core Economy , London: New Economics Foundation.

NEF is an independent think-and-do tank that inspires and demonstrates real economic well-being.
This document considers the history of coproduction and how it can change the way we conceive public policy

NHS

NHS, Co-production model
A great definition and model for coproduction in health

Think Local Act Personal (TLAP).

Think Local Act Personal (TLAP), co-production ladder .
Helpful depiction of coproduction

C. Durose & L. Richardson, 2016.

Designing Public Policy For Co-Production: Theory, practice and change [ebook] . 1 ed. s.l.:Policy Press Scholarship Online.

This is one of our favourites, especially for those looking for a business case for adopting coproduction in policy and processes. Contains good examples and also points out that poor policy making can fail people but doesn’t fail everyone equally and coproduction can go a long wait towards providing progressive policy decisions. We couldn’t find a freely accessible version. However, the first few chapters very useful and some are available on google scholar .

Maren Batalden, Paul Batalden, Peter Margolis, & others, 2016

Coproduction of healthcare service - Access it here
This article traces the history of the coproduction concept and presents a model of healthcare service coproduction whilst exploring its application as a design principle in three healthcare service delivery innovations.

Susan Hunter and Pete Ritchie, 2007

Co-Production and Personalisation in Social Care: Changing Relationships in the Provision of Social Care (Research Highlights in Social Work) Access parts here
An introduction and some good practical examples of what happens when coproduction goes wrong.

Noreen Blanluet

Blog on ‘Public service operating principles’ - Access it here
New graphic which compares traditional approaches in public services to the co-productive approach.

Glyn Elwyn, Eugene Nelson, Andreas Hager, Amy Price, 2019

Coproduction: when users define quality - Access here
This article describes the potential added value of ensuring that end users are engaged in an effective process of coproduction when seeking healthcare.

Vennik, F., Bovenkamp, H., Putters, K. & Grit, K., 2016.

Co-production in healthcare rhetoric and practice. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 82(1), pp. 150-168. - available here
This article explores why hospitals involve patients and staff in co-production activities and hospitals’ experiences with co-production in practice. They found that through coproduction, seeing patients and hearing their experiences created a sense of urgency among staff to act on the improvement issues raised.

Thomas-Hughes, H., 2018.

Ethical ‘mess’ in co-produced research: reflections from a U.K.-based case study. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 22(2), pp. 231-242 - You can request access to this article here
Whilst this article focuses on co-produced research, it is a reminder that co-production can be difficult (possibly because it is a new concept) and requires resources and commitment

Good Example Links

(Click any example to follow link)
Manchester Homelessness Partnership Toolkit
Making It Real Toolkit, TLAP
Scottish-Coproduction Network
Coproduction Network for Wales
North Cumbria Health and Care
Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland

Promoting Co-production in Health and Social Care Practice: Documents and Guidance

(Click any title to follow link)

Quality Matters, Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC)

Tools for co-production in mental health commissioning, National Collaborating Centre for Mental Health
UCL Centre for Co-production in Health Research
Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE)
TLAP
Care Quality Commission (CQC)
Skills for Care
National Development Team for Inclusion (NDTi)

Intro Series No.2: How to Coproduce

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 13:23:42 GMT

Let's #CoproduceCare - Democratising the care debate & uncovering the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care.

This series of blogs will explain what coproduction is, what Coproduce Care plans to do and to explore good examples of coproduction. This second blog will explore coproduction practically and talk through some examples of coproduction in action.

Blog 1 Recap: Coproduction by No Other Name

In the first blog we discussed what coproduction is as a concept and its potential to revolutionise how care is provided as a service to actively involve those affected by care or caring. This blog will include a quick recap and then consider examples of those trying to working coproductively in different sectors – don’t forget to tell us of examples in your area so we can share the knowledge and create a coproduction catalogue.

What is Coproduction (figuratively speaking)?

In their recent report , Skills for Care set out a pictorial version of NEF’s coproduction ladder:

An even more accessible version of the coproduction ladder has been developed by TLAP :

Watch out for the bureaucrats!

There is no legal definition of care, yet the provision of care seems to be increasingly legalistic and bureaucratic. Whilst we have come a long way from Edward VI’s Poor Laws of 1540s which kick started the legitimacy of institutionalised care , a lot of today’s care and caring is focused on policies, procedures, strategies, KPIs, measures, incentives, targets, systems and structures rather than people.

Even across the pond people are coming to the realisation that data entry in health care is becoming mind-numbing and voluminous , resulting in many health care workers suffering from burnout. It can also lead to the individual and their community being lost in the care debate. However, there are some changes afoot. For example, it is promising that social care commissioning now requires organisations to evidence their commitment to Social Value before being awarded a contract with a commissioning body for health and social care.

Also, the newly created Primary Care Networks (PCNs), which are set to revolutionise the way GP surgeries operate, are touted as a move towards making health and care more community focused. But even these are poorly understood and fundamentally being developed behind closed doors with professionals rather than people and lacking consultation and therefore coproduced. However, all is not lost. Next, we explore examples of coproduction.

Coproduction Examples

There is some great work being done on coproduction. Previously purely top down organisations are starting to reflect and reform to produce some praiseworthy coproductive moves. These include Manchester City Council , Care Quality Commission and various local authorities which are developing coproduction advocates.

Manchester City Council

A grassroots movement has been started by Manchester’s Homeless Partnership (MHP). Manchester developed coproductive ways of working leading to better outcomes, recovery and experiences for homeless people. Following a City Conversation, a values-led charter was created. The partnership divided stakeholders into groups. People with experience of homelessness were represented in the groups at all levels, including as chairs of the Partnership Board. The group drove the change, safeguarded agreed values and supported joint working with homeless people and management.

The scheme created a Business Support Group to enable joint decision making in developing the homelessness solution. People with experience of homelessness helped codesign the Big Change MCR – an alternative giving scheme supporting individuals who are homeless by paying for items they need such as a deposit for a home, a training course, clothes for a job interview, furnishing for a new flat, or travel costs. Their digital platform ‘ Street Support ’ also links people affected by homelessness with those able to provide support. The Booth Centre for homeless support has contributed to a coproduction toolkit from its experiences of working with the MHP. Communicating their work to the wider public was a key.

The beginnings of Coproduction in care – Making It Real initiative by TLAP

There are some promising moves towards coproduction both at an organisational and personal level in care. The Making It Real toolkit developed by TLAP (Think Local Act Personal – a promoter of coproduction in social care) was re-launched last year. The relaunch was born out of Quality Matters , an initiative that is led by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and has previously been pioneered by the health and social care regulator, the Care quality Commission (CQC) to collaboratively improve the quality of care. Making It Real is exactly what it says on the tin.

TLAP developed the document coproductively with people who use care services and organisations providing services, to create a selection of ‘I’ statements (what people using care services of what they expect from services) and ‘We’ statements (commitments service providers can make to meet people’s needs) to make good quality, inclusive services a reality for people using them. In a sense, it can be used as a care quality benchmark.

‘I’ statements include: ‘Living the life I want, keeping safe and well’, ‘Keeping family, friends and connections’ and ‘Staying in Control’. Whilst the ‘We’ statements of what organisation’s commit themselves to in order to improve the quality of care include ‘We don’t make assumptions about what people can or cannot do and don’t limit or restrict people’s options’ and proactive intentions such as ‘We work with people as equal partners’.

The Making It Real initial has a real potential as a quality assurance for organisation in care to ensure they are operating in a coproductive way and to standardise a system of coproduced care. check out their full document here and helpful directory TLAP have created on how organisation are committing to and using Making It Real.

"For example, Hobbs Field care service for adults with a learning disability, has used Making It Real to coproduce their recruitment process. Rather than asking people to attend an interview panel, the home co-designed how people wanted to be involved in recruitment. This resulted in a more informal process. Using pictures, Makaton and signing, people living at the home decided to show candidates around the home and have an informal ‘get to know you’ chat. This resulted in benefits all round. People living in the home felt a sense of pride and in more control of the process. Staff had a renewed sense of codecision-making and the interview candidate was able to express her own values with people living at the home. Coproduction doesn’t have to look corporate or ground-breaking. Sometimes the simplest solutions can be the most effective."

Local Coproduction motions in social care

Many progressive health and social care teams are developing their own coproduction networks.

A useful example is the Scottish co-production network which shares learning and has an array of good practice. They have created a series of short films to help spread the word about coproduction, sharing good practice such as people with previous criminal convictions co-creating a website to inform employers on how they can empower and safely employ people who would normally be excluded from the jobs market.

The Scottish coproduction network seems to realise the importance of coproduction, with its annual Co-production Week, this year being held from 18th November and focusing on ‘bringing people together from across the country to share ideas, learning and stories about how co-production puts people and communities at the heart of the support and services they’re a part of’ . Their online suite of resources shows examples of coproduction with older people developing preventative care models and coproducing dementia services.

Coproduction in Wales

In August 2019, the Scottish coproduction network highlighted the publication of Co-production Network for Wales’ new graphic which compares traditional approaches to public services to the co-productive approach. The background of the thinking behind this is described by Noreen Blanluet in her blog post.

Other more local and lesser known coproduction networks include:

Side by Side Network – a London based coproduction network based in London, specifically Service User Network & Experience Bank for Coproduction supporting people involvement, innovation in mental health and peer support.
Coproduction Norfolk – is a Peer Consultant & Change Agent, Pioneering In Mental Health & Social Care, aiming for a Social Movement For Equal Health
Researchers or ‘think tanks’ like UCL Centre for Co-production in Health Research are developing a collection of information to explore what co-creation is, what coproduction means in everyday life and the honest difficulties of grappling with the word ‘coproduction’.

This are just a few examples of some of the coproduction work being done by organisations. We hope to share more and create a free and accessible coproduction database, so please feel free to share with us some of the work you are doing which you feel would come under the coproduction banner.

Our next blog will showcase a ‘coproduction reading list’ for those interested in the literature behind and backing up the coproduction idea and agenda.

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

About Care from the Oustanding Society

Wed, 02 Oct 2019 10:08:33 GMT

Today was an outstanding day, not simply because the deluge of April showers in October disappeared, but because we were lucky enough to attend the Outstanding Society Network event. This is our summary of some excellent talks and insightful messages from CQC , Care England , Alzheimer’s Society and Wendy Mitchell .

Intro

The Care Quality Commission carries out regular inspections of care services to make sure they are safe, caring, well-led, effective and responsive to people’s needs. Services receive a rating depending on the outcome of the CQC’s rating. The highest rating is an Outstanding one. The Outstanding Society is the brainchild of Camilla Trimble who, whilst out walking her dogs, had a light-bulb moment and thought that there should be a forum for providers to share good practice in outstanding care services. With the help of Care England and Skills for Care, this has now grown into the Outstanding Society which shares best practice and meets annually to hear from health and social care leaders.

Coproduce Care is passionate about sharing the great things going on in care which many would not otherwise learn about. Therefore, feeling very fortunate to have been invited to the forum meeting this year (our director is part of a service rated outstanding by CQC), we are sharing some of the positive messages from today’s meeting.

(Whilst we are a big fan of the amazing Professor Martin Green we opted to take the off-peak train to London and missed his talk at the start. However, all is not lost! We will be having a 1:1 with him later this year and sharing this on YouTube)

Avnish Goyal , Chair of Care England, gave an interesting session on the issues currently facing care. He questioned the claim, which some make, that we cannot fund social care. He also showed caution around the arguments to nationalise care. For Avnish, this would not necessarily take away the cost of care, but would take away the choice currently open to people in terms of service providers. In terms of long-term planning for social care, he called for a 30-year plan and an increase in the minimum wage as well as making planning easier so that services can be developed and managed in a more efficient way. An interesting point put forward was whether we should have a Commissioner for Older People.

Skills for Care Update

As hosts of the event, Skills for Care gave their own update. As many may or may not know, Skills for Care is the strategic body for workforce development in adult social care in England i.e. the social care version of Skills for Health and is on the lookout for a new CEO. This should be announced sometime in the Winter.

Skills for Care is also working on some very helpful guides for social care including effective supervision, time management and safety in social care. They have worked on these very coproductively with providers. An exciting development is a series of films coming out in spring 2020 to explore Outstanding organisations in different services such as residential, shared lives and homecare.

A message from Skills for Care to providers

Don’t forget, there is some very helpful Workforce Development Funding (WDF), which is especially useful for some innovate courses run by Skills for Care such as a ‘Well-Led programme being rolled out which includes three one-day courses covering some of the core issues managers struggle with. Check out their website for more.

Dementia experience from Wendy Mitchell ‘somebody I used to know’

Next came a tear-jerking session from the legendary Wendy Mitchell who was diagnosed with early dementia in her 50's. Wendy has used her experience of dementia to write a book and share those experiences so that loved ones, carers and others can truly empathise with what some dementia sufferers experience. Here are some snippets from her talk today:

If you notice some confusing frisking of a large wall mounted TV when it’s turned off, consider that it might appear as a hole in the wall to some dementia suffers – reflect on whether it should be covered up in some way.

Never underestimate t he benefits of Alexa : Wendy used it to remind her of things via her iPad when she was out and about, or to turn on the lights upstairs before she went to bed or simply to turn on some calming music when things were becoming overwhelming.

Answering the phone seems such a natural thing to do, but for Wendy, people’s impatience whilst she thinks of her reply to questions they may ask, makes phone calls unbearable. She points out that ‘people can’t see you thinking on a phone call’ . Therefore, she uses the more advanced mode of communicating with her family via FaceTime. She points out that having this different way of communicating makes it more apparent how heavily the NHS rely on telephone calls as their mode of communicating with patients.

Fundamentally for Wendy, getting a diagnosis was a relief . It was the uncertainty of not knowing what was wrong before that, which made her life stressful. She had contemplated whether she had a brain tumour, or even worse. Getting the diagnosis meant she could move on with her life, although she had a few comments on how diagnoses could be announced to patients in more positive and humane ways.

We are definitely itching to read her book. If the book is anything like the person it will be interesting, emotive and enriching. Access it here . Wendy also writes a daily blog called ‘which me am I today? ’

Jeremy Hughes – Alzheimer’s Society

A very impassioned Jeremy from the Alzheimer’s society came next. The Alzheimer’s society is the UK's leading dementia support and research charity. Jeremy explained to us some of the fantastic things they are doing.

Firstly, he commended the care sector ball which is held annually and aims to reward and recognise some of the great care carried out by people every day.

Jeremy went through the Alzheimer's Society's ‘ dementia statements ’, which they have coproductively developed with 100's of people with experience of dementia or involved in dementia work. The dementia statements were inspired by the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (a UN convention focused on the rights of people with a disability – a little known, yet powerful Convention which the UK signed up to in 2006 and which we will be exploring more in later posts).

The dementia statements focus on the ‘rights’ of persons with dementia. The statements are:

1. We have the right to be recognised as who we are, to make choices about our lives including taking risks, and to contribute to society. Our diagnosis should not define us, nor should we be ashamed of it.

2. We have the right to continue with day to day and family life, without discrimination or unfair cost, to be accepted and included in our communities and not live in isolation or loneliness.

3. We have the right to an early and accurate diagnosis, and to receive evidence-based, appropriate, compassionate and properly funded care and treatment, from trained people who understand us and how dementia affects us. This must meet our needs, wherever we live.

4. We have the right to be respected, and recognised as partners in care, provided with education, support, services, and training which enables us to plan and make decisions about the future.

5. We have the right to know about and decide if we want to be involved in research that looks at cause, cure and care for dementia and be supported to take part.

What do you think?

Some startling facts from Jeremy – a third of people with dementia die from a disease rather than dementia. Suggesting that some people with dementia are not being given the treatment they need or not being diagnosed.

The Alzheimer’s Society are doing some fantastic things including the biggest ever population survey of people living with dementia, about their lived experiences. One of the biggest outcomes of this is their use of technology. But Jeremy cautioned that this should not just be about using technology to save money in care. He felt that n ew technology should mean something to people and not just be a replacement for human contact or conversation.

They are also working with the National Trust to see how they can make their spaces more accessible to people living with dementia (hurrah!).

Kate Terroni

The other headline speaker was the newly appointed Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care Kate Terroni from the Care Quality Commission .

Taking over from Andrea Sutcliffe, she admitted she had big shoes to fill, but if her talk was anything to go by, she will be a key promoter of coproduction and was incredibly open to listening and taking on the views of the people in the room.

Kate’s focus

Kate discussed her 3 priorities:

1. The voice of lived experience – we represented people’s voices in care plans, has it been heard and is their lived experience obvious?

2. Joined up care – to what extent are services working together

3. Innovation – services should be embarking on innovation that makes a difference to people’s lives.

She highlighted something she heard from Clenton Farquharson at TLAP:

" good care is about having a life not just a service"

Also, Kate felt that there was a priority to embed coproduction in everything we do as care services and for the CQC as an inspector of services.

Inspections

On inspections, Kate explained that they are making them more concise and shorter.

On new releases from CQC – watch out for a new and frank report on sexual safety in care homes, due for release around November. She warned that it will be quite hard hitting, but Coproduce Care feels these are conversations that need to happen – just because someone is older doesn’t mean they don’t or shouldn’t have sexual relationships!

Medication Errors

Kate pointed out that there are around 237 million medication errors every year . CQC have released a publication on medicine in health and social care. Check it out here .

She also reminded us of the ‘smiling matters’ campaign. You can access their publication on dental care here.

Finally, put 15th October in your diaries as this is when the CQC’s annual ‘State of Care’ will be published. Sign up here to be notified when the publication of this report goes live. It is important because it is a fantastic summary by the CQC of research and data by them on how the sector is doing. We would encourage you to sign up and we can have a twitter chat about it when it is released!

Other nuggets

NICE has a Learning Library - access it here

Thanks for reading!

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

Intro Series No.1: What is Coproduction?

Fri, 27 Sep 2019 10:19:59 GMT

Let's #CoproduceCare - Democratising the care debate & uncovering the hidden opportunities for people-led care.

This series of blogs will explain what coproduction is, what Coproduce Care plans to do and will explore some good examples of coproduction. This first blog will explore coproduction and what Coproduce Care aims to do to promote it.

Coproduce Care is a not-for profit, community interested company (CIC) which aims to embed coproduction into the core of health and social care. We want to see the voices of those living, working, supporting and experiencing care leading the agenda on care law and policy not just being subjected to it.

Why care about coproduction?

Coproduction is a great way of identifying issues, respecting the view of those affected by care and providing support to ensure that those individuals can shape the systems designed to support them. This may appear as an obvious way to work. However, poor systems, processes and cultures can become deep-rooted and prevent change. This requires engaged citizens and informed professionals to put coproduction firmly on the health and social care agenda. Coproduce Care aims to kick start this process from a grassroots, bottom up ethos and with a wider audience than normal. Our aim is to democratise the care debate. But we need everyone’s help! Please follow us and spread the word on Twitter and Facebook .

We believe that too many decisions in health and social care are conducted without true coproduction and usually with the same organisations and professionals (and more recently politicians), behind closed doors or at exclusive or inaccessible conferences (in terms of time and travel to attend).

In fact, we believe everyone involved in care should have a say – a son or daughter caring for their parent, a care worker working night shifts, a registered manager dealing with staffing issues....... We will be sharing care policy and news to support everyone’s awareness of the care debates which are set to change the industry and support people to influence the debate in a meaningful way.

We will bring social care policy and law to the people affected by it (which is basically everyone in some way).

Our focus is on the barely represented area of social care, but we will also be discussing health issues as they increasingly intersect with social care.

So, what even is ‘coproduction’?

Warning – this bit gets a bit techy...Sorry!

There are many definitions of the word ‘coproduction’. Back in 2013, the thinktank NEF (the New Economics Foundation), commissioned by the mental health charity MIND, wrote a report defining coproduction as:

“A relationship where professionals and citizens share power to plan and deliver support together, recognising that both partners have vital contributions to make in order to improve quality of life for people and communities.”

A leading organisation in promoting coproduction in care is the Social Care Institute of Excellence (SCIE). SCIE defines coproduction as:

“a key concept in the development of public services. It has the potential to make an important contribution to all of the big challenges that face social care services”. (SCIE)

The Care Act 2014 statutory guidance defines coproduction as:

“when an individual influences the support and services received, or when groups of people get together to influence the way that services are designed, commissioned and delivered. Such interventions can contribute to developing individual resilience and help promote self-reliance and independence, as well as ensuring that services reflect what the people who use them want.” (The Care Act 2014 statutory guidance)

Our favourite definition however, is by NHS England:

“co-production is a way of working that involves people who use health and care services, carers and communities in equal partnership; and which engages groups of people at the earliest stages of service design, development and evaluation”

and that coproduction:

“…acknowledges that people with ‘lived experience’ of a particular condition are often best placed to advise on what support and services will make a positive difference to their lives. Done well, co-production helps to ground discussions in reality, and to maintain a person-centred perspective. Co-production is part of a range of approaches that includes citizen involvement, participation, engagement and consultation. It is a cornerstone of self-care, of person-centred care and of health-coaching approaches.”

This definition from NHS England we feel really encompasses a good definition.

We hope that if we can reach a point where the idea of coproduction as a concept is fully understood by people at all levels, it then has the capacity to:

- become part of a recognised public vocabulary around care
- part of the agenda for health and care training and development and
- to democratise the provision and discussions around care

Where does the term originate from?

Coproduction aims to create better autonomy for people using services. It requires people in senior positions and positions of power to respect and act on the diversity of experiences, views and knowledges within care. Creating an equal playing field between those in positions of health and social care policy power and those experiencing, working, using or living in care.

What does it mean to us?

We would describe ‘coproduction in care’ as a values-based cultural change to care, where decisions are driven by people not process. This is a big ask, especially for institutions steeped in bureaucracy. In fact, coproduction in care has been driven by organisations working in social care, such as SCIE , Skills for Care and TLAP . SCIE has promoted coproduction through their annual coproduction week. TLAP have done some fantastic work around coproduction, not least promoting its Making It Real initiative which organisations can use as a person-centred quality mark to improve their services.

Coproduction Principles:

It is important to remember that definitions of coproduction should ideally not be used by organisations as a simple rulebook or coproduction tick box.

Coproduction means each organisation needs to internalise the processes and develop their own working models and charters to embed into their workplaces.

Let's #CoproduceCare

Coproduce Care has been created to open up the debates, support and discussions around social care.

Coproduce Care started out of frustration that a lot of decisions and plans around social care are carried out behind closed doors and from the top down, with very little effective involvement from the majority of people affected by social care – health and social care staff, families, people using services, registered managers, directors, carers, volunteers…..

What we'll do:

We aim to put the unheard voices of health and social care at the heart of care improvement and change. Initially, launching in the late Summer, we hope to create an interactive site and hub which will:

1. Connect Organisations

So that more integrated, financially supported and effective services will emerge

2. Connect volunteers and people with support needs

So more informal ways of helping people support each other within their community can develop

3. Knowledge Share

Where funding, blogs on social care rights and services will help spread positive and helpful knowledge about social care for everyone to access freely

4. respond to government and policy consultations

Provide a service that will help anyone involved in care or caring, to respond to government and policy consultations on social care - so that policies will be better informed and to encourage a coproductive approach to making effective social care laws and policies which people of all abilities can influence and engage with.

Coproduce Care will spread social care insights and information through

Regular blogs and information sharing through social media – twitter and Facebook and Webchats
A YouTube channel to discuss current social care issues and interview key decision-make
A dedicated grants and funding page where people and organisations can keep up-to-date with opportunities for them to apply for funding to co-create their own community initiatives.

Join us

We will be relying on a small but dedicated team and volunteers.

So, if you would like to be involved, please get in touch at hi@coproducecare.com and help us open up the care debate, properly democratise care and please do join and share Coproduce Care:

Spread the word and uncover the hidden opportunities for people-led coproduced care

#coproducecare

@coprocare

www.coproducecare.com

Health+Care Conference 2019 - Day 2 Summary

Fri, 28 Jun 2019 15:01:27 GMT

We're still buzzing from the talks at the second and final day of the Health+Care Conference in London.

Expecting a quieter day than the first, our team thought we might get away early, but stayed right until the exhibitors started packing away due to some fantastic panel discussions...

Starting with my summary

I’d initially planned on whizzing around the theatres like yesterday. However, with Matt Hancock’s Special Advisor talking about his work, C ambridge and Peterborough STP discussing parity of esteem, NHSX pre-launch keynote address and CQC’s Ian Trenholm’s thoughts on the regulatory system, I was firmly planted in the Healthcare’s Keynote Theatre all day.

Reflections from Richard Sloggett – Matt Hancock’s Special Advisor

Richard explained that his job is unsurprisingly fast-paced, with his first experiences involving swatting up on acronyms to translate NHS policies it into public friendly messages. Possibly the most revealing (and random) part of Richard’s revelations was the ‘ red box ’ which, from what I could make out, was Matt Hancock’s in-tray. Anything that goes in it will be on his radar and must be addressed. Richard spent the majority of his day trying to clear the red box. Sensing the audience’s confusion, chairman Professor Paul Corrigan explained that this was part of how the constitution worked – if the Minister doesn’t see something and agree it, it isn’t happening. Makes sense.

Richard revealed that the 3 current priorities are:

Workforce
Technology
Prevention

Presumably anything that has a faint chance of entering the red box has to at least cover one of these areas.

Something to look out for is the prevention green paper due out in July. Amongst other things this aims to cover what the government will provide and what they expect citizens to do in terms of preventing their own health deterioration. For Richard, the real point on prevention was population health management and that Integrated Care Services (ICSs) should be well place to deliver this.

He reminded us that next week on 1st July Primary Care Networks (PCNs) go live. The funding that is being allocated to PCNs should be filtered out to its partners – I think we all have a role in ensuring that this happens, especially since they will be rewarded financially if, for example, their activities reduce A&E admissions. Question is how will this be monitored?

Richard ended his talk with the observation that currently, as represented by the exhibitors at the conference, technology in care is 'explosive'.

Parity of esteem in mental health

The question for this panel was ' Parity of esteem in mental health - is this the time to make it really happen? '. The panel included Lorna Evans from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust, Emma Tiffin from Cambridgeshire and Peterborough STP and Sarah Hughes , Chief Executive of Centre for Mental Health. Lorna gave a heartwarming explanation of her own experiences of mental struggles following personal strategies – a strong user voice, maybe because user voices were not well represented at the conference, an improvement for next year maybe? Her insight into how Cambridgeshire promoted its Community Based Crisis Support helpline through 111 option 2, represented a key point of access and clear attempt to create practical parity.

Other important attempts at parity expressed by this panel include:

Focusing on peer support
Equally well

A great point prompted from an audience member's observation of the New Zealand’s model, came from Sarah. She felt that the political leadership in New Zealand was itself progressive and the UK was far behind that. Therefore, without a PM that is as progressive as theirs, we all need to become activists in our area and push for the change we want to see.

Do we need legislative change to make the NHS long term plan happen?

Paul Maubach (presenting) and Niall Dickson

The short answer from Paul Maubach , CEO of Dudley CCO, was yes! His justification was that it would align incentives and practices and integrate providers. He argued that our legislation currently favours competition not collaboration and creates separation between the commissioner and provider. The change should instead privilege collaboration between the two. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 doesn’t, according the Paul, facilitate this. In fact I feel that this video by the Kings Fund from 2013 is still relevant in representing the complex quagmire of services, actors and initiatives that have been created:

Niall Dickson , from NHS Confederating listed his take on the challenge, including:

A need for a ‘bet value test’ that is less subjective
Greater flexibility locally, arguing that the NHS should produce on quality not price
He recognised that there is a fear in the social community sphere of there being an ‘Acute Takeover’ and that they will be subsumed into larger NHS provision

Both Niall and Paul agreed that the 2012 Act should ideally be repealed. However, acknowledge the political unpopularity of this idea.

NHSX pre-lauch keynote by its CEO, Matthew Gould

Large queues formed 15 minutes before this talk, representing a general buzz around NHSX. In fact after the talk I personally wasn’t too much clearer about what it would actually look like, but got the sense that neither did anyone else. The mission, however, was clear and very interesting. For a high-level intro, listen to this 5 min video from Matt Hancock

Matthew’s Gould's keynote address included these key messages:

NHSX is a new single decision-making team bringing everything tech related together to give patients and staff the technology they need.

What’s different? Not imposing top down decision on Trusts and CCG’s but instead letting professionals work together for local solutions. His aim was to ‘keep the centre thin’ and to create platforms from which others can develop on, but keep some things central such as screening and booking systems.

It will have 5 missions which include:

Reduced burdens on staff so they can focus on patients
Giving citizens the tools to access information and services directly
Ensuring clinical information is safe and digitally accessed
Improving patient safety across the NHS and
Increasing productivity across NHS

A great question from the audience was, how would we know they are effective in say 2 years time? Matthew thought for a moment then suggested we judge NHSX against these 5 missions and at the very least on the fact of whether NHSX has made any impact at all. He argued that it really should have by then.

A few people also pointed out the Long Term Plan’s ambition to go paperfree by 2020. From the examples of poor systems in his talk, it was clear that this isn’t going to happen by then, but he was clear that it was still in their plans.

Ian Trenholm - CQC's Chief Executive on the future of inspection

Another key leader in health and care, Ian Treholme, led the penultimate talk of the day. He remarked that CQC is still going on a journey but had a built up a reputation as a regulator with a methodology he felt worked. He showed frustration about the fact that CQC collects a lot of positive stories which are unrepresented by the media. Made me think, maybe this is where as a sector we can pick up on this and start sharing positive stories on platforms such as social media?

Ian mentioned that following the revelations at Wholton Hall by Panorama , the CQC went through and is still going through a process of reflection, asking: how was this able to happen? What could have been done differently to detect that the abuse might have occurred? They are going to investigate internally. I felt this critical reflective type practice was refreshingly honest. He explained that the future may include a digital solution to get poor practice evidence to them quicker from those using services and staff.

Ensuring safe technology by working with NHSX was a key passion.

In terms of personalised care, he was unequivocal that CQC will be inspecting services from the standpoint o effectiveness from a patient perspective. They will be expecting leadership to show how they are working collaboratively to enable this. This will be a key part of ‘Well-led’. I got the impression that without evidence of this collaborative working for better care, the top CQC ratings will start to become out of reach.

He mentioned that CQC are starting to review their regulatory process . They will be moving away from periodic reviews, whereby good or outstanding services are visited less often than others, and moving towards risk-based inspections. When I asked him to clarify this, it appears that the plans are very young and providers will be consulted, so keep an eye out for this consultation and please get involved.

Ian Treholme

Questions from the audience for Ian

One audience member asked Ian about his views on families putting cameras in people’s bedrooms. Ian pointed out that pre-Wholton Hall he probably would have been more certain on an answer to this. Post-Wholton Hall, the jury was out and he understood the arguments for and against in terms of revealing poor practice which CQC might be unable to detect verses respecting a person's dignity and human rights.

My last question to him and I think to every really, was/is:

considering the push towards social prescribing, pushed through by PCNs, we will most likely see a lot of services traditionally provided by regulated providers, slowly and informally migrating to community groups and organisations. Should social prescribing be regulated in some way?

Understandably, seeing that PCNs are so new, there was no firm answer to this, but maybe a point to consider.

The last session from the Keynote Theatre

The last session was possibly the most lively one, with a full panel including Caroline Abrahams from Age UK , Lord Victor Adebowale from Turning Point, Clare Gerada frm NHS Assembly and Sir Robert Francis QC , Chair of Healthwatch Engand.

The panel was clear on the need to engage and consult with patients on strategic decision-making, but were not as clear on the role of enforcing coproduction (which I’m fan of and asked about). Other points included:

Sir Francis promoting what I would term a dialectical approach with citizens to strategic decision-making
Lord Victor Adebowale was concerned about ‘racist algorithms’ in technology, staff shortages and discrimination. Interestingly, he will be editing the BMJ’s next edition with a focus on discrimination – will be keeping and eye out on this.
A great quote from Lord Adebowale was that ‘culture eats structure for breakfast’ and without a culture change, we can create all the STPs etc but will still operate top down.

Finally, from me...

Finally, someone from the audience was from Think Local Act Personal (TLAP) and put in a plug to their Making It Real initiative , which they had made every effort to promote, but were still not seeing enough take up. This is a great shame. TLAP have effectively coproduced quality marks for health and social care. We (Manor Community), were early adopters and used Making It Real in a pilot and continue to do so.

Maybe people just do not understand what coproduction is!? The co-opting and misunderstanding of coproduction is a huge bugbear for me. I would urge people to check out and share TLAPs coproduction ladder and ask their leadership which step they operate on on the coproduction ladder?!

The TLAP question mirrors an important issue across the two days – the tools are there, it’s just making sure they get used and known by the right people and embedded into their culture.

Other nuggets from the rest of our team at the conference:

Leicestershire County Council’s ‘housing support coordinator’ link role as part of a centralised program bringing different health and well-being support together to make more holistic preventative care plans to help move people out of hospital
The Richmond Group of charities and their social prescribing collaboration across care, health and VSCE across Somerset.
The King’s Fund’s recently published report on Wigan Council . Wigan Council ran a coproduced collaborative community development scheme that has been specifically linked to health benefits and mental health
Clare from Care Forum Tech Transformation pointed out that we shouldn’t use tech for its own sake but keep in focus what difference does it makes for helping enhance relationships and that the person is at the centre of change.

That’s it from us! Hope it’s helpful, feel free to share if it is.

Sophie and the team @coproducecare

Health+Care Conference 2019 - Day 1 Summary

Thu, 27 Jun 2019 14:12:43 GMT

Our summary of a packed Day 1 - in case you missed it

It’s the last week in June, so of course we’re back at the Excel in London for the Health+Care annual conference where professionals from local authorities, NHS, providers and government come together to present ideas, thought leadership and share local initiatives on improving the health and care sector.

Here is my assessment of the first day:

The main themes were technology, social prescribing and more technology. Both of which were being touted as enabling collaborative working and effective care, with the main challenge being changing embedded cultures and habits.

A note from the Minister of State for Health

Caroline Dinenage, Minister of State for Health

The day started off with a keynote address from Caroline Dinenage , Minister of State for Health, who used a great term to point out that health and social care are ‘ umbilically linked ’ and emphasised the need to ‘blur the boundaries’ between statutory, community and informal care through integration. A big fan of promoting local examples she explained the benefits of the community-based support group ‘ Men Shed project ’ – a voluntary group of men coming together to support each other through joint interests and DIY, with the knock-on effect of creating friendships and decreasing isolation. Her excitement over Integrated Care Systems (ICS) and technology, was countered by, what appeared to be an honest frustration at the delayed Green Paper on social care. Some key messages from her included:

A report by Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) on their vision for technology and examples of using HIVE or Centrica technology and smartphones to help monitor and interact with people in their own homes.
A £5m carers innovation fund , officially announced this month, with the aim of providing 'support for the supporters' to enable carers to stay healthier and happier for longer themselves

Psychological Safety

Later in the morning Bruce Daisley , twitter’s European Vice President turned on the charm with some hilarious cat humour from the twittersphire, but also made an important point about how a person’s mood has a direct effect on how they work. He pointed out that psychological safety, which I feel should and will have an increasing role to play in improving care services, is key to the duty of candour and dealing with errors in care. If anyone needs evidence, he pointed out that research by Amy Edmonson carried out in hospitals, revealed how safeguarding incidents were more likely to be reported by a psychologically safe team. You can read an article on it here

Lessons from integration - ICSs

At the Integrated Care Services Hub, Henry Ireland from Imperial College Health Partners gave what he called ‘boring innovation points’ which were in fact not boring at all. He emphasised the need for transparency from all professionals within ICSs in order for them to work successfully. His points included:

relationship building
allowing entrepreneurialism within the team
shadowing other professionals and
spending time together

It got me wondering whether the material structures that have been deconstructed in an aim to save costs, such as losing joint working spaces in favour of home-working, have in fact contributed to making ICS operability more difficult?

Also part of this talk was Alan Davies , Director of Digital Health at NW Coast AHSN . It's worth checking out their website as Alan had some interesting reflections into how ICSs change staff behaviours and how, as pointed out by Dido Harding from NHSE, social care is critically poor at dealing with its customers in comparison to other sectors such as retail.

The Green Paper, Social Prescribing and the Social Value Calculator

Just before lunch, the Residential Care Theatre became packed with care providers eager to get find out the future of social care. The panel consisted of Damian Green , Michael Voges and Paul Burstow . Like Caroline Dinenage, Damian Green expressed frustration at the delayed Green Paper but argued that it required quality public debate which couldn’t happen in the current political climate and should include a cross-party solution. Interestingly, he claimed to favour a model of care funding based on a pension system model.

Even more interesting, Paul Burstow seemed to agree by suggesting a similar solution of an insurance model. Housing with care for Burstow was key, as well as self-directed care. He ended with the question of whether we actually need a Green Paper? In his view the sector has been extremely successful in solving the problems it faces by itself. He pointed out that the Care Act 2014 was a strong piece of legislation that simply needed more funding.

The afternoon started with an important message from Nicky Parker from Manchester City Council on new care models . She pointed out that representing social value was a growing trend for social care commissioning. So if you are tendering for contracts you need to have your organisation's social values policy locked down! In fact 20% of the overall weighting in marking tender submissions is now dedicated to provider's ability to demonstrate their social value impact. The social value calculator is becoming an increasingly popular tool for local authorities and worth getting to grips with. Local authorities are starting to require new providers to register and actively engage with this new product. This video gives a short synopsis from one company operating a social value calculator.

James Sanderson , Director of Personalised Care at NHS England (NHSE), gave an enlightening representation of transformation in action. Giving people using care services choice and control was key. He advocated the Comprehensive Model for Personalised Care. This included an operating model which comprised of:

Promoting shared decision-making between medic and patient (of which I’m a big fan)
Giving people choice – he explained a process which seemed very similar to informed decision-making per Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board case
Holistic care planning

Continuing the social prescribing message, James was a great supporter, especially where it mirrored what was actually happening in the community. His 5 year plan included self-managed support (peer support, health coaching and PAM – Patient Activation Measurement ) and being bold in relation to cultural change.

Other Highlights Included:

David Hambleton explaining how New Zealand's Canterbury model of ‘care alliancing’ means focusing on what is right for the patient rather than the system.
Raina Summerson , CEO of Agincare, making the great point that private providers (arguably the cornerstone of current social care provision) are currently not invited to strategic discussions around the local development of Primary Care Networks (PCNs) and ICS developments. Something that fundamentally needs to change. A huge elephant in the room.

Simon Chapman and Susanne Cox (NHS England and NHS Improvement)

With a lot of hype around PCNs, my (rather lengthy) last question of the day was to Simon Chapman , Deputy Director for Personalised Care, NHSE. I asked:

‘when pushing for social prescribing, what happens when the community and VCS organisations are oversubscribed? Where does adequate funding come from to support them and how do we ensure that people do not fall through the net? Will the PCN's newly created Social Prescribing Link Workers have enough capacity?!’

His answer was ultimately - to be honest we don’t know. However, he did make the point that social care needs to look outside of its immediate periphery for funding support. Sport England for example are looking to fund projects that help people engage with physical activities, Matt Hancock is looking at creating a social prescribing academy and I later discovered that you can apply for the Evidence Generation Fund to support digital products.

A great first day, but still so many questions on the other, even larger elephant in the room, also known as funding. Hopefully insights to be had on day 2. Three of us from @manorcommunity attended the conference this year. All three will contribute to an updated post for day two, so keep an eye on our blog page.

ps. don t forget to look out for the launch of the ‘ CARE BADGE ’!!! ….

Let's Coproduce Care

The care reflect- Issue 3

The care reflect- Issue 2

The care reflect- Issue 1

New ebook Chapter Preview - AI and Social Care

Read one of our chapters on AI in Social Care

We're Back with Podcasts in 2025!

New Year, New Social Care Podcasts ��️

Our new project: Social Care Workforce Redesign in BNSSG

Letter to the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

To ensure both the health and wellbeing of our population and our social care workforce, we recommend the following:

1. Improving pay for social care workers, in real terms

We recommend:

2. Professionalising the care system

We recommend:

Driving more men into social care roles

We wanted to investigate the issues around recruiting male care workers...

Why did we want to investigate this issue?

So what did we find?

What is the government doing about it?

What do we recommend?

Our 2020 Roundup

Here are a few things we wanted to share from this year...

Coproduce Care at the Care Summit 2020: Democratising Social Care

Making your voice heard!

Theme 1: Womens Work

Introduction

Perceptions and pay

To check out more information on our submission, click here

What is intersectionality?

How is it useful for care work?

How is gender or race important for understanding how care work is valued?

How can gender inequality shine a light on pay inequalities in care? (Part 2)

Gender

Race

COVID-19 and non-white staff﻿

Better pay means equality

References

Don't forget to check out our Act for Care page - Click HERE to visit.

#CoproductionWeek2020 may be over but Coproduction isn’t

About a word

But writing blogs is never enough. We struggled to get the word of coproduction out to a wider audience, so we decided to record some interviews with those in the know.

We're Going Live!! - Livestreams

Sign up to our livestreams - starting Wednesday 29th April 2020

Wednesday Nights #MidweekWhine

Thursday Nights - #ChatForCare at 7pm just before #ClapForCarers....

APPG Adult Social Care “Making Sure People Have More Control In Their Lives”

A focus on coproduction and co-creation in care

What’s an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) anyway?

A Personal Story

Sally's top tips for coproduction

Panel 1: “Who decides what my care and support looks like?”

The Care Act

Question Time

Panel 2: “How do we make best practice common practice?”

Question Time

The King's Fund Annual Annual Conference 27th November 2019

Improving Health Locally

‘if you think competition is hard you should try collaboration’

What does it all mean?!

Breakout sessions – the role of social care in prevention

“what is the definition of social care?”

Manifesto – Which Party for Health and Social Care?

Inequalities in health and care

Join us

Care England Conference 13th November 2019

Contents Andrea Sutcliffe - NMC Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive of Telecare Services Association Kate Terroni - tips from the Regulator Professor Martin Green #GoldenNuggets

Andrea Sutcliffe

What the NMC is and does

NMC – 2020 and beyond

Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive of Telecare Services Association

“ Using technology to promote autonomy, enable connectivity and improve quality”

Kate Terroni – a focus on Leadership

Recent CQC State of Care Report

A tip for Outstanding

When 'exceptional' becomes the norm....

A nod to CQC Publications

A big THANK YOU from her to you

Professor Green's Golden Nuggets

Join us

COVID-19 and non-white staff

Contents

Andrea Sutcliffe - NMC

Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive of Telecare Services Association

Kate Terroni - tips from the Regulator

Professor Martin Green #GoldenNuggets