Voluntary partnership to drive self-directed support
Five of Scotland’s leading voluntary organisations have come together to drive forward self-directed support in Scotland.
The initiative, Changing Support, Changing Lives, which has been funded by The Scottish Government, comprises Long Terms Conditions Alliance Scotland (LTCAS), Scottish Consortium for Learning Disability (SCLD), ENABLE Scotland, In Control Scotland and the Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS).
The organisations behind Changing Support, Changing Lives, have shown innovation, leadership and vision as well as practical experience in supporting the development of self-directed support and will now help and support other care and support providers across the country to make the transformation to self-directed support.
Enabling people to have greater choice and control over their support is at the heart of the project as this can deliver transformational change to the lives of individuals. This project is inspired by the conviction that self-directed support must be led by people’s aspirations for their own lives and is successful when individuals who are eligible for support work in partnership with their support providers.
Self-directed support (SDS) offers people the choice of taking control of the funding they are entitled to as an individual budget so that they can buy or arrange their own support packages to meet their personal, social and healthcare needs. This gives individuals greater choice and control over their care and support – allowing them to life the live they choose.
The Scottish Government is aiming to significantly increase the number of people who direct their own support and the Changing Support, Changing Lives partnership welcomes the introduction of the Self-Directed Support (Scotland) Bill which is imminent.
The aims of Changing Lives, Changing Support are to work in partnership with providers to ensure action is taken to implement self directed support across Scotland. The partnership wants to encourage providers to explore different models of self directed support such as Individual Service Funds (ISF) and provide them with pathways to implement SDS. They also want to work together with providers and the people that access support to consider things like portability of budgets and supporting individuals to coproduce as well as changing practice and systems to enable people to direct their own support. Changing Support, Changing Lives will be very much action focused using roadmaps to help providers make their journey to self directed support.
Changing Lives, Changing Support believes this action based approach will lead to:
- increased understanding of SDS
- shared understanding and learning about SDS
- better leadership of SDS
- increased innovation and diversity in what providers offer and what is available for people directing their own support.
Changing Support, Changing Lives will begin to roll out of a programme of conferences, master classes, networks and redesign projects across Scotland to support providers as they begin to transform their services and processes to make self directed support a reality. A self assessment tool will assist providers to assess where they are in relation to the changes they need to make and service blueprinting will be designed by a range of people involved in accessing and providing support to tackle the most challenging areas for implementing SDS. Support will also be given to providers to engage the people who want to take up self-directed support in evaluating the impact of the programme in a participatory way. A SQA accredited qualification in Personalisation will also be available for practitioners.
Visit the Changing Support, Changing Lives website to find out more.
http://www.changingsupport.org.uk/
