Hi Rikke,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I read somewhere recently that it was important to \u2018be courageous but not foolhardy\u2019 in life and I suppose when we were embarking on this project, I thought we were doing just that. We didn\u2019t know exactly what would happen, but we hoped that something good would come of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the time, SDS was getting into full swing and there was a lot of discussion about whether or not people who access support were receiving any real choice. We thought that we might be able to do something about that from our role in IRISS \u2013 particularly around supporting practitioners and people who use services to come together and respond to this challenge. The aim was to explore questions like \u2018what is it that makes a good life?\u2019, \u2018what supports can the community provide those who access care and support?\u2019, \u201chow might people who access support also provide support to others?\u2019 etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The hunch was that by putting people and communities in the driving seat the responses to the challenge of \u2018choice\u2019 would be more appropriate, have increased legitimacy and greater buy-in from a wider group of people. I suppose we were thinking that there may be a variety of \u2018micro-providers\u2019 that might arise and we know from the evidence that these types of providers tend to be in a unique position to deliver appropriate care and support services due to their ability to provide very flexible, personalized and locally based services. The first inspiration for this work was hearing Community Catalysts talk about the different microenterprises that they\u2019d supported throughout their work, and the recognition that these tended to be created in conjunction with social services practitioners who had become increasingly frustrated with not being able to make changes happen in practice for people that they support. The evidence from their experience highlighted that when people are put at the centre they are more creative and they draw on the strengths and assets within their own networks. In analysis of this it was also easy to recognise that it was often simple changes and simple supports that people ask for and require.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But at the time people and practitioners weren\u2019t sure what to expect, or what to do. There was a sense that practitioners weren\u2019t being given enough time to work together with people being supported by services to assist them to be creative or to think creatively about how they might spend their budget differently. Also, the financial constraints on local authorities were beginning to become more and more apparent and people were beginning to associate implementation of SDS with budget cuts (and were seeing SDS as simply a way of doing things on the cheap). Resources, both in terms of money and time were extremely limited.<\/p>\n\n\n\n