National provider development programme and links to
building community capacity
The PPF consortium is working with providers and commissioners to
stimulate service developments within a range of provider and user
led organisations to support the wider implementation of
personalisation. The initiative is called the national provider
development programme, which forms part of the wider work of the
consortium to support the implementation of Putting People First.
The programme has a particular interest in how providers can adapt
their services and business models to respond more flexibly to
people’s needs and aspirations, support choice and control and be
compatible with personal budgets. Part of this involves the way that
providers can support people to make better use of community
networks and resources and build and draw upon their own reserves
of social capital.
The programme is working with more than 30 providers, of different
sector, size and service type, to stimulate changes in the way their
services work in direct response to things people have said are most
important to them now and in the future. Each project will report
what they have achieved in November. Taken together, these case
study materials will form a picture of the various components that
go towards making a truly personalised service, from personcentred recruitment to individualised accounting and from flexible
contracts to proactive engagement with families and communities.
Of the projects underway there are several which relate directly to
building community capacity and social capital. In Norfolk, two
separate care homes are forging better links with the local
community, both to open up their own facilities to local people not
resident at the home and to enable greater involvement for
residents in social and other activities happening outside.
St David’s Care Home and Sun Court Nursing Home in Sheringham
are both using their respective communal areas as “brokerage
hubs” for local people in receipt of personal budgets or in the
process of moving onto them. Sheringham is a very rural area, with
many isolated older people, so the projects are focused on bringing
people together in one place to get support from peers and to
access information and advice about self-directed support and
personal budgets. The hubs will also act as a regular opportunity for
people to speak with a range of local providers of social care,
household and leisure services that they might be interested in
drawing upon.
Another project in Lancashire is looking at how a service can work
to ensure that people have regular contact with people other than
staff. Castle Supported Living support people living in the
community with learning difficulties in the Ribble Valley, East
Lancashire. Responding to the statement, “There’s not enough paid
people in my life to help me do the things that I enjoy,” Castle are
developing volunteering as one answer, also incorporating one page
profiles for all the people they support, relationship maps and
matching tools to help match the right volunteer to someone with
similar hobbies and interests.