Leadership for Personalised Care Newsletter

We will be holding a one-day event for all our alumni at Resource for London on 1st May.

This is a long-awaited chance for all 10 cohorts of our national programme, and others, to come together and share learning, spread ideas and celebrate what everyone has achieved in trying to build strong, inclusive communities and more personalised approaches to care and support.  

Booking will open in January but in the mean time, please hold the date and tell your friends!

Space will be limited and so early booking to secure your place is advisable. 

There will be a small charge to cover our costs, but we will keep this as low as possible.  

Email info@leadershipforpersonalisedcare.org.uk to express an interest and watch this space !

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Lee is the Bassetlaw Place-Based Partnership Programme Director within the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB. She is responsible for overseeing the integration and service improvement programmes across Bassetlaw Place Partnership. Due to its rural location, rapid house building and poor transport links, a high proportion of residents have limited access to public services and experience high levels of health inequality.

Along with colleagues from the Local Authority, Primary Care and the voluntary and community sector, Lee took part in the regional Leadership for Personalised Care programme in 2021. While personalisation was already on the agenda for Bassetlaw’s place partnership prior to the programme, taking part provided a timely opportunity to collaborate as an integrated team to promote personalised care as a core shared ethos and develop the agenda locally.

Taking part in the programme enabled Lee and her colleagues to dedicate time to meet regularly

and develop closer working relationships and shared vision for personalisation outcomes.

She feels that the programme’s content helped improve their understanding of the theoretical principles of personalisation and the methods of application as part of system change across organisations. The content input and protected time to be together enabled the team to discuss the future roll out of personalisation within Bassetlaw and how to work towards delivering a truly person- centred, personalised, approach to service redesign and co-production of services.  

To read more of this case study, see our website.

Bryan, a greengrocer by trade, attended Cohort 9 of our national programme and said the knowledge and skills he acquired has inspired and underpinned his community activism.

Bryan is joint CEO of the East Brighton Food Co-Op which has been operating since 2020 and has delivered over a quarter of a million meals to residents who need them as well as saving over 500 tonnes of surplus food to redistribute to food projects across the city.

“The cost-of-living crisis has meant that a million pensioners are suffering from malnutrition, at a cost of billions to the NHS,” he said.

“Our petition, which we delivered to the House of Lords, would mean that local authorities would have a duty, underpinned by legislation, to provide meals on wheels services.

“This will help reduce adult social care costs because it will enable people to live independently in their own home as well as saving the NHS money in treating the appalling effects of malnutrition.”

Since going on the LEHC course, Bryan and his business partner have formed partnerships with his local NHS Primary Care Network and have diversified into social prescribing with allotments and cookery courses for people with diabetes. 

“It opened so many doors and has helped me develop relationships and given me the confidence to talk to professionals. It’s a brilliant course,” he said.

He remains optimistic for the future but for now is focused on maintaining a service to Brighton residents that relies for funding equally on private donations and contributions from charities and a dedicated band of volunteers.

Anna Severwright trained to be a doctor until a series of complex medical conditions left her disabled and unable to continue her chosen career.

What followed was a battle not just against chronic illness, which causes pain and means she uses a wheelchair, but also against a system that treated her as a mere bystander in her own care.

“In 10 years I saw literally hundreds of medical professionals but I was packaged into a box as a disabled person and my life just shrunk,” she said.

“That traditional approach actually cost the system more and it was only through conversations around personalisation and co-production did I start to engage with normal things and get my life back.”

Anna has been able to bring her lived experience to the forefront as a former co-chair of the Coalition for Collaborative Care and most recently as a Convenor for Social Care Future, lobbying government ministers and being one of a panel of experts giving evidence to a House of Lords enquiry.

We are proud to have Anna as a tutor on our Leadership for Empowered Communities and Personalised Care programme as she is such a powerful advocate for the benefits of person-centred care, based on her own experiences.

“Co-production is not just a concept, it's a meeting of minds coming together to find shared solutions. It can help ensure services are genuine working well for people,” she said.

When not making keynote presentations at seminars and other health and social care events, Anna can be found on X at @annaseverwright.

Catherine Wilton, Director of the Leadership for Personalised Care programme, reflects on the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead in 2024 and a new, more personalised, way of working.

It’s a pleasure to be looking back over 2023 with you and reflecting on what we’ve managed to achieve in what has been a year of two parts. 

Social Care Future celebrated its fifth birthday as only it can with a two-day gathering in Manchester that both inspired and informed, but most of all was just fun.

Several alumni from the Leadership for Empowered and Healthy Communities programme attended the event that recognised past achievements while very much looking forward to the future and reframing the public perception of social care.

So, it was fitting that delegates were treated to the first public showing of a new campaign film, narrated by star actress and disability rights campaigner Liz Carr, that seeks to change the story of social care. 

Watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LConFgcWvDc

There was also barely a dry eye in the house when See Me, the latest thought-provoking offering from MiXiT, a performing group for people with learning disabilities, was shown on the main screen.

The conference had three separate themed zones for its presentations: Storytelling, People Power and Building Bridges, with delegates able to pick and choose the many and varied presentations to attend.

In a nod to the welcome and growing influence of #socialcarefuture among policy makers, the first session in the Building Bridges zone saw ADASS president Beverley Tarka outline how its ideas have helped shape the framework for Time to Act, a new roadmap for social care.

Certitude, who so imaginatively create safe spaces for people to meet and share ideas and experience in community settings, were an ever-present in the Storytelling zone, while the Camerados brought their unique and human touch to hosting a public living room in the People Power Zone.

“There was so much love, hope, ambition and action at the brilliant @socialfuture gathering,” tweeted one attendee, to sum up the overall mood.

And final word to #socialcarefuture convenor and campaigner Anna Severwright: “This is what people getting together for change looks like. We had such an amazing time and came away with lots of ideas and plans.”