By Beverley Tarka, president, ADASS
When ADASS and carers’ organisations launched the Carers Challenge in October, our goal was to unearth the gold standard work social care teams and voluntary organisations are doing to support unpaid carers.
The response has been great, with lots of stories about how organisations are working with carers to co-produce services and place them at the heart of decision making.
One example was from the London Borough of Waltham Forest. There, the council has established a residents’ panel for unpaid carers who are looking after someone with dementia, so they can meet with social care team managers and other senior staff, face to face, once a month.
Giving carers the chance to shape services
“Unpaid carers told us that their voices weren’t being heard and they felt opportunities were being missed to improve services here in Waltham Forest,” said Matthew Mint, the council’s dementia and service development manager.
“The panel gives them the chance to offer feedback about the services they are using every day and iron out issues they are personally experiencing.
“In doing this, we as managers are then able to take this feedback and make the changes that are needed to the way we work, which benefits all unpaid carers in our borough.”
Matthew said this had influenced service delivery in the borough; for example, the council was reviewing dementia training for adult social care as a result of concerns raised by carers at these meetings.
Liz, a carer to her husband, who has dementia and Parkinson’s, said she found the panel meetings useful in understanding how processes such as hospital discharge and safeguarding worked.
“It allowed me to feel comfortable airing my concerns,” she added. “I’m really pleased that telling my story about the everyday struggles I face can help managers make the changes we all want to see. By speaking up, together we make someone else’s life a little easier in the future.”
A carers’ good practice ‘storehouse’
Over the next few months, ADASS, alongside people with lived experience, will be finding out more about projects like this one and gathering them together to create the Carers Challenge ‘storehouse of great ideas’.
We hope this will be an inspirational tool for people working with unpaid carers, where they can find out more about different approaches other organisations have taken and how they can transfer this learning to their own practice.
So, watch this space for more information about the launch of the storehouse in early spring.
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It is good that the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services (ADASS) is working with charities to engage with unpaid carers as unpaid carers and also persons in need of care are a vast source of information and greatly underused by many organisations.
I have been working with my own Local Authority, (LA) for several years along with several other unpaid family carers and also persons in need of care.
However, in this, within my own Local Authority, I and others have found that there is much misunderstanding of co-production, (https://www.scie.org.uk/co-production/what-how), by some of the persons within the LA and perhaps the LA itself. So, while engaging in using co-production please do fully understand what co-production is.
In some instances they bring something on which work has already been done and now looking for some form of agreement or not, but that is not co-production or even co-design, but purely consultation.
In co-production all the parties to the co-production should be invited as early as possible, perhaps just when there is some form of an idea of what to look for and then engage with the participants to extend the idea to become a full proposal on how to proceed to a final agreement and then implementation. The work produced is and should be owned by the co-production participant as a group. At every stage the group should be involved in the decision process or at least be advised on what has or hasn’t been agreed and reasons why before any further actions are taken. partners should always be equal even though the LA and any similar organisations will be larger, but size and power should not be factors as the co-production group should have equal power including all participants within the group. All views should be given equal acknowledgement and consideration and all participants be respected.
In co-production communication is a vital ingredient, which many LAs are far from good at because their concept for years has been telling rather than asking and then respecting.
There are many aspects to co-production one of which it shouldn’t be rushed, so in any good co-production a god length of time has to be there, no definite preconceived ideas, but a willingness to listen and be open, accountable and transparent, again concepts that have been alien to LAs for years.
So in the article it states “The panel gives them the chance to offer feedback about the services they are using every day and iron out issues they are personally experiencing.
“In doing this, we as managers are then able to take this feedback and make the changes that are needed to the way we work, which benefits all unpaid carers in our borough.”, this can be part of consulting the group, but only a small part of what should be being done.
I say this has, if co-production had been there before the services started, perhaps areas which are being seen as not good or as good as they could be could have been better shaped from the commencement of the services and in that be much better valued by all concerned, as value to persons requiring services should be one of the main priorities. While costs of services, especially in the current climate will be a major factor, when all views and opinions are being mentioned costs at that stage should not be a reason to discount them, as over time ways to include could be found, but would’t be if costs stopped them dead at first mention, again a concept not readily accepted within LAs.
I do see looking at co-production is a great step forward for LAs, but only if it is co-production as it should be and not as directed by LAs, for if the later it will not be co-production no matter how many times it is mentioned that it is.
Step learning curve for LAs and would be even stepper for central government, for central government need to do much better also, for central government don’t wish to even listen no matter how many times they say they are. Now is that a misunderstanding or deliberate by central government, I know which I believe.