A cracking example of community working in Bexley

This week I met a man in his sixties who's lived with a family for eleven years. It's just the sort of community activity that I've been banging on about since starting as Chief Executive of the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) in January.  

His name’s Tom and he’s part of the Shared Lives scheme. There are 12,000 Shared Lives carers in the UK. Carers share their family and community life with someone who needs some support to live independently. In this case, Tom has a learning disability but most importantly, the support he gets means he can contribute to his community. 

Alex Fox is a trustee at SCIE and he invited me to see the scheme in Bexley. It's a cracking example of how home, family and community-based ways of working mean that people are more engaged and their lives are improved. It's time that people aren't just the passive recipients of social care. 

We’ve had one party leader speech during the conference season; I look forward to the others and to social care discussions playing a part in the run-up to the General Election campaign. Schemes like this show what can be achieved by unlocking barriers to community engagement. Our Care Act implementation tools, being developed here at SCIE, will be published soon. Let’s hope the new duties that local authorities will take on, for instance, by providing advocacy services, are a stepping stone to empowering users and carers with the tools they need to contribute to their communities. 

I loved the energy and determination of the people who run the local scheme - Catherine, Tom, Bernice and Mandy. They’re developing a project which shows such good practice in home-based care and support in communities; whilst also recognising the contributions, that people with social care needs, can make to family life.  Meeting the carers, Mr and Mrs Sookarry, along with Tom, brought these principles to life.