Using 15 years of learning about self-directed support to help close the Care Act rhetoric-reality gap By John Waters - In Control At the #socialcarefuture gathering in November in Manchester, In Control helped convene a major session on closing...

By Aisling Duffy Arranging homecare when mum's dementia made life at home very difficult brought starkly into focus for me the role of the provider from a very personal perspective. We experienced a transactional, needs led process focusse...

By Nic Crosby A thought: Each of us with our families seek joyful experiences, sharing, learning, playing, sitting in the bed in the morning talking 'daft. In service land we seem to spend every day cutting joy out of children's, young p...

By Wendy Lowder I've never been one to bemoan national policy decisions (OK - I admit I do sometimes)! I've always been a sort of a 'crack on with job' kinda gal. I suppose Barnsley (in South Yorkshire for those of you who have never heard...

By Shaun Webster I want to share with you some thoughts about how I would like to see people with learning disabilities contributing as paid employees in the field of social care. I think about people with learning disabilities not just as...

By Lynne Elwell This year marks twenty two years since I ran the first Partners in Policymaking course in the UK. This is a leadership training programme for self-advocates and parents and relatives of disabled children. As you might...

By Sam Sly I've read all the great blogs written so far for #socialcarefuture and every one of them says a little bit of what I would have wanted to write about, so I thought I best get this blog out quick, before there is nothing more to...

By Ewan King For all the problems it faces, the social care sector has always shown that it can innovate. From personal budgets, which were pioneered in social care, through to shared lives schemes around the country, it's a sector which c...

By Julie Stansfield We can be forgiven for feeling pretty gloomy when, as a society, we are in effect seeing it as a problem that older people are living longer and younger people with complex health needs are surviving....effectively blam...

By Richard Humphries This week Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Jeremy Hunt used the occasion of World Social Work Day to set out seven principles around which th...