Leading the way on ‘Portal Information’ – Inspire Community Trust
March 17, 2010
Mark Lloyd acts as Chair of the leading Disability Charity Inspire Community Trust based in Bexley.
Inspire provide services across Bexley, Kent, and Bromley including the management of direct payments and brokerage services for people wishing to manage their own budgets for care and support. Inspire are one of the first national User Led Organisations (ULO) to launch an information portal on available services. They have done this in partnership with the London Borough of Bexley.
Visit the new website at www.shop4carebexley.co.uk or contact Inspire at info@inspirecommunitytrust.org
Personalisation – the way forward?
March 12, 2010
So with an election pending what does the future hold for social care? Cronic public sector finances pave the way for challenging times as we all get older and place a greater presure on both health and social care services. The fact that our politcians are still unable to put their petty political arguments to one side and pull together to finally address the time bomb of an ageing population is damming. Governments over the past three decades have failed to address the knowledge of the baby boomers now reaching retirment age and the required cost to meet this massive care bill.
Personalisation offers a wonderful philosophy of choice, independence, and control for the future but also a transfer of responsibility from the state to the individual. This is the next stage from Community Care in the 1990s which saw the transfer from hospital to the community. Now we move from the community to the individual taking personal responsibility through controlling what they want.
We all should demand the highest possible quality in our care and support services whether or not we take on a personal responsibility – the so called power of the ‘grey’ pound must ensure that older people are listened to and focus the minds on the real issues of our age the meeting of health and social care support of the baby boomers. Less focus on expenses of politicians and getting to grips with the real issues is called for including clarity on free personal care and means testing for services. Oherwise we will sleep walk and drift into fewer and fewer people receiving state supported services and greater numbers of people falling through the so called safety net of the once called welfare state.