In Control “The Big Event 2010”

Debbie Ryan, Liverpool

I attended the In Control Big Event 2010 at the BT Convention Centre Liverpool on Tuesday 16th March.  Why? So I could learn more about In Control.

I cannot speak for every member of TAG but for me, 12 months ago, I knew absolutely nothing about care.  My experience over the last 12 months has been to learn as much as I can about care to help myself and to share this knowledge with other TAG members.

For those who do not know, the first thing to do is to approach your local social services care department and explain what your care needs are.  For children, this can be done by a parent or guardian. It does not matter if you do or do not receive the Care Element of Disability Living Allowance; it also does not matter if you are a child with care needs or an adult living alone or as part of a family or have a partner.  Your care needs are your care needs.

Some councils’ will be operating the old system whereby a social worker will visit to identify a need for social care and assess that need.  Once assessed, the user will be allocated a number of hours care per week.  They should then be given the option of social service care or Direct Payments. With a Direct Payment, money is paid to you, so you can arrange your own care.  Direct Payments have been around since 1996.  (Reshna did an excellent article about Direct Payments in TAG Talk last year.)

So what is the new system? The new system is called Self Directed Support.  It is about people being in control of the support they need to live their life as they choose.  Some people manage their support on their own; others need help from family, friends or people who are paid to help them.  In the old system, professionals made all the decisions about the support people could have and often, who would provide it.  The person needing the support often had no control.  The new system started with social care and the money in social services, but is quickly becoming about health, education and other funding services.

There are 7 steps of being in control of your support:

• My money - finding out how much (Individual Budget)
• Making my support plan
• Getting my plan agreed
• Organising my money
• Organising my support
• Living life
• Seeing how it worked

The Big Event Day was open to all; the seminars and workshops took place in a total of 14 zones, and each zone had an hourly event. I chose to attend the children’s zone, a talk by Gloucester County Council. Gloucester is one of a very small number of children’s services which is beginning to explore the application of self directed support across their whole service for disabled children and young people. They have been operating this system for 18 months -   I was very impressed with what they had to say.  They gave examples of children’s support plans, as part of one child support plan, the child had to make a new friend, which cost nothing, another child was bought a laptop, and another young adult had hair extensions because due to illness, had lost her hair and felt unattractive to people of her own age.  Obviously, plans had to be agreed, but if considered reasonable with a reasonable outcome of improving the quality of life the child, the plan was accepted.  They also discussed working within the community to improve access and acceptability to community activities, for example, advising Brownies that they must provide a ramp as access under the DDA.  I also attended a talk by the Law Commission about the provisional proposals of reforming Adult Social Care, I must admit, I found this a bit heavy going.   My final seminar was about Adult Social Care and Personalisation   Personalisation is the Government’s word for the new way of organising public services.  This at times got a bit technical.

Overall I found the day interesting, it made me want to go back on the
In Control website and learn more. 

My advice is that if you feel you or your child’s life would benefit from support then approach your council and make enquires. Your ability to financially contribute to the cost of your support is not based on the amount of support you require but on the amount of income you have coming in.  Do not be put off, earnings are usually disregarded. 

By now, you are probably wondering what is “In Control”. In Control was born in 2003, it was set up as a project in order to find a new way of organising the social care system.  It has developed into an independent charity committed to promoting active citizenship, community development and the reform of the welfare state.   In 2003, In Control had 6 Local Authority members.  In 2004, a government minister got involved and In Control began to offer advice to the government on Individual Budgets and Self Directed Support.  In 2005, the government began its individual budget pilot programme to test out individual budgets independently of In Control. At the same time In Control opened up membership to all Local Authorities in England.  This work led to the 2007 Putting People First policy which set out a cross government committee to transform adult social care in England.  In Control Local Authority membership is now 120 out of 150 authorities in England. In Control has extended its work to include:

• Children’s Services
• Health Care Reform
• Work and benefit reform
• Community development

In Control became a charity in 2009 and works as an equal partner in In Control international with its sister organisations in Australia, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In Control is the organisation that helps to make Self Directed Support happen. To learn more visit www.in-control.org.uk

TAG – THE CONSTITUTION

As those of you who were at the 2009 Conference will know, I was co-opted as a trustee for a year, and in particular I was asked to look at TAG’s constitution. The constitution is the document which underpins TAG and all its activities, so it is important that it is up to date and accurately reflects TAG’s objectives.

Over the twelve months or so leading up to the 2008 conference, the trustees spent a great deal of time overhauling the wording of the old constitution which had been in place since 1992, and the results were put before the AGM in 2008 which voted unanimously for the proposed changes.

In 2009, the trustees asked members if they agreed that the eligibility for membership of TAG should be changed, and there was an overwhelming vote against that.

When I started to look at the constitution, it turned out that a number of different versions of the new constitution were circulating, and there was general confusion as to which was correct. In addition, some of the wording appears to have become corrupted, and it became obvious that the whole thing needed “tidying up”. That process has now been completed, and the revised version will be put before the 2010 AGM for approval, and a copy will then be sent to the Charity Commission.

The main alteration proposed will be to the provision allowing the constitution to be altered in the future. The existing wording does not actually make sense, which was what caused some difficulty at the AGM in 2009, and the new wording will correct that.

I have also been asked to look at the possibility of changing TAG from a “member’s” charity to a charitable company limited by guarantee. The main benefit would be that the financial liability of the members and trustees would be limited to a specific figure. In these uncertain times, I think that would be a great comfort! The problem is that the cost of changing to and then running a charitable company would be relatively high, and TAG would have to comply with the rules and regulations of both the Charity Commission and Companies House. I have spoken to several charities similar to TAG which have changed their status in this way, and in retrospect most were not convinced of the benefits of the change.

The other possible option, and one which looks a great deal more attractive both in terms of cost and effort, is to change TAG to a Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO). This is a proposed new type of charity which would be similar to a charitable company but without the need to comply with company rules. The original intention was to roll these out early this year, but because of the election, and also the huge interest in CIOs which rather took the government  by surprise, it is now unlikely that they will be available before Spring 2011. I and the other trustees think that it is well worthwhile looking closely at the possibility of changing TAG to a CIO, but obviously that will require a positive vote by the members at an AGM.

I will of course be at the 2010 Conference, but if anyone has questions or suggestions, do please get in touch with me.

Micky Macartney
Co-opted Trustee