The Valuing People Support Team
The White Paper
In April 2000, the Government published Valuing People - a White Paper setting
out its vision and strategy for the lives of people with learning disabilities. Its
focus is on promoting the rights and social inclusion of people with learning
disabilities and represents a radical development of Government policy. As such
it is a cross Government White Paper which located lead responsibility for its
delivery within the Department of Health. It covers both children and adults with
learning disabilities, though the children's aspects will be further developed by
the forthcoming children's NSF. The White Paper was been widely welcomed by
all stakeholders - in particular self-advocate and family organisations.
Valuing People is at least as much about changing the attitude and culture of
public services towards people with learning disabilities as it is about specific
service change - though the latter will undoubtedly follow the former. The White
Paper set down a number of specific objectives:
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Ensuring that disabled children gain maximum life chances
Ensuring that the transition from childhood to adulthood is a positive
experience and opens up new opportunities to employment and education
Increasing choice and control, through promoting rights, strengthened
advocacy, increased use of direct payments and a moving towards person
centred services
Increasing help and support to family carers, including specific targets around
older family carers and those from minority communities
Improved personal health, through enabling people to access high quality
mainstream health services and re-focusing specialist services
Enabling people to have greater choice and control; over where and how they
live by increasing the range of housing options available - part of which
involves closing the remaining long stay hospitals
Enabling people to live more fulfilled lives through modernising day services,
and increasing access to education, transport and leisure opportunities.
Enabling more people to obtain employment, in particular paid employment.
Ensuring all agencies commission and provide high quality, evidence based,
continually improving services, including a particular focus on people from
minority communities and those at risk of abuse.
Ensuring the workforce are properly trained and skilled, in part through the
introduction of a new nation training framework, and including a focus on
awareness amongst the wider public workforce
Promoting effective partnership working at strategic and practitioner levels,
including through the use of the Health Act Flexibilities.
Responsibility for delivering on the adult dimensions of this challenging agenda rests
with newly creating Learning Disability Partnership Boards. Based on local authority
boundaries, these multi-stakeholder bodies are to link into Local Strategic
Partnerships. Children's delivery rests with the Quality Protects programme.
The Valuing People Support Team
Nature and Purpose of the Team's Work
To provide national leadership and development support to Partnership Boards, the
White Paper created a National Director of Valuing People and the Valuing People
Support Team. Whilst the National Director retains an overview of children's issues,
the Support Team is only concerned with the adult dimensions (including transition).
Neither are responsible for policy (which rests with Disability Policy Branch) nor for
performance monitoring (which rests with CSCI, the Healthcare Commission, SHAs,
OfSTED etc).
The National Director reports directly to Stephen Ladyman (Government Minister
Responsible for this area) and he and the Team are currently located within the
Modernisation Agency. Essentially, he has three component parts to his role:
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Leading and managing the Valuing People Support Team (see below)
Informing and influencing policy development and delivery across Government
in order to ensure the inclusion of the needs of people with learning disabilities
Maintaining the profile and public understanding of the Valuing People agenda
The Valuing People Support Team consists of a number of Regional Advisors and a
Business Manager. The Regional Advisor role is essentially to:
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Provide advice and development support to Partnership Boards
Work alongside regional and cross authority bodies such as SHAs, Connexions,
WDCs, to help facilitate local initiatives
Maintaining the profile and public understanding of the Valuing People agenda.
In addition, each Regional Advisor takes a lead interest in a number of specific topics
in order to promote internal Team expertise.
The achievement of the Valuing People objectives is heavily dependent upon
ensuring that people with learning disabilities are included in the delivery of all
mainstream, policy initiatives. This, and recognising that learning disabilities is not
currently a high level DH priority, means an emphasis of the work is on developing
the learning disability dimension to whatever mainstream policy is focusing on; e.g. in
NHS terms the PPF, NSF's. A central part of the Team's work is thus networking with
other agencies, both within government and beyond.
Whilst the work of the Team is necessarily diverse, the main focus for the first twelve
months (2002/2003) was on:
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Partnership Board development
Person centred planning
Advocacy development and support
Housing strategies
Employment strategies
In 2003/2004, whilst this work continued, there were further programmes of work on:
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Leadership and change management
Mainstream health
Direct payments
Day service modernisation
Family carers
Transition
Ethnicity
In 2004/5, the priorities agreed with the Minister are:
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Helping more people get jobs
Helping more people have choice in housing
Increasing the number of people with direct payments
Making families as a central part of what everyone does
Putting rights and 'citizenship' at the core of local work.
Team Membership
The Team consists of the following people, based in locations as indicated and full
time unless stated. All Regional Advisors are secondees from senior positions across
the learning disability field. The Team started work in February 2001 and has a life
until March 2006.
National Director: Rob Greig (0.8 wte). Dominions House, Bristol. Business Manager:
Zoe Porter. DHSC offices, Bristol. Director's PA: Pauline White
Regional Advisors:
London:
Linda Jordan, Niki Gitsham (0.5 wte). Eileen House (ex London SSI office) Admin
Assistant: Margaret Royle South East: Sue Carmichael. Eileen House (ex SE SSI
office) Admin Assistant: Charmaine Amaral South
West:
Steve Strong (0.8 wte), Dominions House, Bristol. Admin Assistant: Pilar Munoz
(0.5wte)
Eastern:
Simon Whitehead (0.7 wte). Advocacy Offices, Stowmarket.
Admin Assistant: Vacant
East Midlands:
Ken Holland. CSCI offices, Nottingham.
Admin Assistant: Grace Nembhard
West Midlands:
Martin Cattermole (0.5wte). Alison Giraud Saunders (0.4wte) CSCI offices,
Birmingham Admin Assistant: Jacki8e Robinson (0.5 wte)
Yorkshire and Humber:
Debra Moore, Quarry House, Leeds.
Admin Assistant: Karen Roberts (0.5wte)
North East:
Tricia Nicoll, Quarry House, Leeds
Admin Assistant: vacant (0.5 wte)
North West:
Martin Routledge: NWTDT offices, Manchester.
Admin Assistant: Sheila Stirling (0.6 wte)
Famlies and Citizenship Lead: Cally Ward (0.5 wte)
There are also currently a number of part-time, fixed term 'Expert Advisor' roles:
Ethnicity - Robina Shah
Housing - Mark McGoogan
Self-directed services - Simon Duffy
Families - Linda Cooper
Health - Rick Robson and Ricky Owens
Workforce - vacant
Transport - Martin Cattermole
The budget for the Team is £2.09m. This covers staffing and organisational costs as
well as all the programmes of work delivered both regionally and nationally.
Rob Greig
National Director
Valuing People