Tim Parkin, Senior Policy Advisor at Think Local Act Personal (TLAP), has spent much of his working life close to - well - policy! Over the years, he's striven to understand, explain and implement many approaches and strategies designed to put people at the heart of services dedicated to their health and wellbeing. In his debut blog for Social Care News, he celebrates the refreshed Making it Real framework which, he believes, could take personalisation to the next level...
I hope that both contain renewed commitments to personalisation, so people don't have to surrender their citizenship or the richness of their lives when seeking support from the system.
But, as we all know, policy on its own does not change things. It needs to be implemented otherwise it remains a set of words on a page, no matter how neat and compelling the words might be.
That’s where the new Making it Real comes in. First published in 2012, it sets out a framework for what good personalised care and support looks like from the perspective and experience of people accessing care and health services.
The TLAP partnership and Coalition for Collaborative Care have worked with people with lived experience and a large number of organisations to refresh Making it Real so that it reflects the objectives of the Care Act and shift towards personalisation in health and other public services.
Making it Real sets out what good looks like in health, social care and housing. Its focus is on support for people to live well – to have a life not a service.
It is made up of a series of I statements, beginning with the powerful statement that “I can live the life I want and do the things that are important to me as independently as possible”.
The I statements are accompanied by We statements, describing what organisations and people within them must do to make the I statements happen. For example, “We work with people to make sure their personal plans promote wellbeing and enable them to be as independent as possible”.
It is not a prescriptive toolkit that tells people what they must do. It is meant to be used by organisations to work alongside and with people accessing support to decide the most important areas to work on.
Used in this way, it can assist organisations to get better at doing personalisation by supporting people to lead the life they want – sharing power and working in co-production are part of that equation. Making it Real-how to do personalised care and support is published today. Organisations will be invited to make a public commitment to use Making it Real as a catalyst for change and improvement, by signing up here.
As I grow older and begin to contemplate a time when I might need care and support for myself and those close to me, including older members of my family, Making it Real expresses most of what I hope and expect by straightforwardly describing what matters most to me, now and in the future.
That’s why Making it Real is important for people who work in health and social care and why it is important to me.
1 comment
Comment by Chris Jeffery posted on
It's essential that organisations ensure that their employees are able to have a healthy work life balance to avoid loss of skills, knowledge and experience.