Alex Fox, the CEO of NAAPS, has sent the following letter to Cynthia Bowers, the CEO of the Care Quality Commission, on behalf of very small regulated providers. He writes:

The latest CQC data on care homes shows a continuing trend towards more people being accommodated in fewer, larger institutions. This is at a time when government and the sector have agreed that tailored, personalised care is best, which is often most deliverable within a small, personal setting. We know that CQC value and support small-scale and personalised support, so, in response to your current consultation, I am writing to you to ask if the impact of the planned rises in fees for very small care homes and small community care services on plurality in the provider market has been taken fully into account?

The regulatory burden upon small services has always been disproportionate, with many having to conform to standards set with much larger facilities and staff teams in mind. The new annual fee structure appears to encourage the trend towards larger care homes, who will enjoy a significant reduction in registration fees, whilst homes with one, two or three beds will see fees more than triple. This situation also applies to small domiciliary and regulated community care services, who will see their fees rise from £621 (for services with fewer than two full time equivalent staff) to £1000 (for any service carried out in only one registered location).

We encourage many proprietors of very small care homes, where the care home is fully integrated into family life, to consider whether Shared Lives registration would better suit their needs and values. However, we recognise that for some care home owners this would not be practical or appropriate, because, for instance, they employ staff, which Shared Lives carers do not. These homes can often nevertheless offer a very personalised and homely service and some are members of NAAPS within our Small Community Services category. We also support the development of very small community support services, some of which have featured as examples of good practice within recent DH policy documents supporting the Vision for social care. They are often operating in very challenging financial circumstances, with registration fees already a significant cost, considering their very small margins.

Your impact assessment suggests the changes will have no impact upon competition or upon overlooked/ minority groups and communities. We feel that this assessment has overlooked the competition between small and large providers and the fact that small providers are often designed around the needs of groups or communities whose needs are not otherwise met by large providers.

We will make a formal response to the consultation, but in the meantime, would urge you to reconsider these changes and look forward to your response.

Brilliant letter. Thank you Alex!

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

A guide to setting up your own local enterprise -  giving support, care and choice to the people in your community

This comprehensive 32 page guide gives people thinking about setting up a micro care or support enterprise  all the information they need to pursue their dream. Answering your very basic questions at the start, including:

         What are micro services?

         What's in it for me?

         What type of service do I want to offer?

and then guiding you through such things to consider as the legal implications, marketing, grants, policies and getting paid,  this practical guide is a must for would-be entrepreneurs.

Written in a clear and easy-to-understand manner, the guide takes you through every step of process you need to think about when starting up your enterprise. Handy web site links sign post you to further reading and support and additional information comes in abundance in the final ‘further information’ section. If you want to bring satisfaction and enrichment to your own life whilst providing a specific service to your local community, this guide is perfect for you. 

The guide is available electronically and costs only £30. To order your copy contact Jill Wighton at Community Catalysts at jill.wighton@communitycatalysts.co.uk

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

Community Catalysts has begun new work with Stockport Borough Council on an exciting micro markets project. Stockport’s Micro Markets Support Coordinator began work in October 2010 with the first task of identifying and mapping out the current level of micro provision in Stockport.  She will go on to work with  work with new and existing organisations to help develop a diverse range of local services for people to purchase with their personal budgets or own funds. Stockport see this as a vital part of their market shaping activity – and central to making sure that Stockport people have real choice of great local social care and health services that they can buy to live their lives.

This work didn’t turn out quite the way I expected. It had a downside; my whole attitude towards having a job was a double edged sword, total fear of losing it and not being particularly interested in what I was doing. It was as if I was redundant every time I left work not knowing where I stood from one day to the next, so drinking and taking what ever came my way had now become part of the course, as if it was some kind of security blanket.

I started staying in drinking rather than going out, I was shutting myself away again with no real kind of conversation with anyone and my whole way of relating to people and the world was beginning to completely vanish. It felt as if I was invisible and feelings of persecution slowly began to slip into place.

In 1991 I became redundant again and instead of investing my time and money in searching for similar work, I drank the majority of my redundancy money and developed an amphetamine habit which looking back caused a lot of my mental health issues which I still carry some of today.

I looked for work during the next three years but the idea, the concept off it all took a backward slide, my thoughts were just to go with it and ride it out with the exception of coming out the other side, but to no avail.

In 1994 I had a total nervous and mental breakdown I had no sense of being, time didn’t exist, people were just there, I couldn’t find myself anymore I had no way of communicating and everything appeared alien. The general feeling I had was that I had gone back in time I was twenty nine years old and it was as if I had never grown passed leaving school, I stopped going out all together and resided on the fact that this was it.

Eight years later in 2002 I had a relapse, it was about 6 months after while I was sat watching TV I decided to fight back but didn’t have a clue how, I didn’t know what to do I didn’t even know what I liked to do for that matter but I wasn’t going to give up on myself this time. I decided to do all the things I didn’t like as there has to be something? I started by just doing bits around the house, some DIY gardening all the things you hated as a kid.

Please log on next month to see what I found and how this helped me move forward in life.

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

Over the last year Community Catalysts has been developing and testing a way for micro social care enterprises to show the quality and value of the services they offer.  The work has been piloted  in Oldham where a number of micro providers have engaged enthusiastically with the Quality Mark.

Choice Support and Transport (CST) is a micro enterprise managed by Mark Finch and Keith Wall. It offers a day time service coupled with reliable, low cost transport with a trusted driver for people with a learning disability. The service has 17 customers who are supported in very small groups to get involved in loads of different activities. Mark and Keith work hard to continually improve their service and to make sure that all the people connected to the service including the families of customers are valued and help to shape the enterprise.

CST wanted to be part of the Quality Mark pilot because they thought it would really help them to improve their service.   “It’s just what we needed”

CST successfully gained both the Gold and Silver Quality Mark awards and were awarded the certificates at a ceremony held in Oldham in October.

On reflection Mark and Keith felt that the whole process enabled them to learn and grow as an organisation.  “The process was difficult at times a bit like Yoga – ‘difficult but stretches you’”.

Keith and March said that working towards the Quality Mark “made them do tasks they had been putting off and were on the back burner”. Importantly the Quality Mark always managed to “keep the focus on what they were trying to achieve”. CST has introduced new feedback forms for customers as a result of the Quality Marking process.

“ We were little fish slipping through a net and the QM caught us”

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

Dance Syndrome is a new Manchester based social enterprise built around the needs of an inspiring dance leader who happens to have Down's Syndrome. Dance Syndrome believes that everybody has the right to follow his or her passions. Future learning disabled dance leaders are supported to develop both as dance artists and as individuals. Disabled and non disabled dancers are working together to open the eyes of the world demonstrating creativity and ability by offering inclusively developed performance and workshops.

If you want to know more contact us at Community Catalysts. Dance commissions are always welcome!

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

The Health Service Journal 31st August 2010 contained an article called 'Remove the barriers to healthcare innovation'
This quote caught our eye as it exactly reflects our experience from our own work to stimulate and support micro social care and health enterprise

Innovation happens because barriers to entry are removed and the prime law that “the intelligence of many is superior to the intelligence of a few” is given the chance to produce results. It happens when all sorts of people are encouraged to provide a whole variety of solutions, and where the best and most appropriate can be adopted by unprejudiced recipients according to their specific needs. This is the “ideas world”, equivalent to the prime law of genetic evolution and equally as powerful.

To encourage innovation, we must focus on creating the context in which it can thrive. There are two equally important steps. First, we must lower the barrier to entry to encourage more people to put forward their solutions. We need to create the atmosphere and the positive incentives to make it irresistible for the best talents from wherever they are to offer the widest and most unimaginable variety of solutions. The environments created in Victorian England and 1990s Silicon Valley are exemplars of the primacy of context.

Second, we must ensure the judgement on these solutions is not limited to an establishment that has a vested interest in the status quo. Simply put, innovative and disruptive ideas cannot thrive if they first need to seek the permission of those who did not do the inventing, or are about to be disrupted. If groundbreaking innovations do not come from incumbents, then incumbents should not be allowed to come between the new solutions and the final recipients either.

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

The concept of ‘entrepreneurial volunteering’ has evolved from the work that Community Catalysts has been doing in Oldham to support people with personal budgets to set up enterprises.  

People have fantastic gifts and great ideas but we’ve found that not everyone wants or is able to use those gifts and ideas to run a business. If you haven’t worked before or haven’t worked for a long time you don’t always have much confidence or sense of what you can do.  Even if you are sure of yourself, know what you are good at and know that other people would like to buy your service it is a huge step to set up a business and lose the support of state funding. And if some days are better than others for you then it can be really difficult to think about running a business which needs the same input from you whether or not you are well.  

Entrepreneurial volunteering is a way for people to use their gifts and passions to design and deliver services that other people will use and value. It is very different from conventional volunteering where people work for another organisation and in a role which doesn’t always use them to their full potential. Let me tell you about the social club run in a community centre for and by people with mental ill health. The couple that run this club John and Liz* have used mental health services themselves and know from first-hand how lonely people can get. They run this social club on a Saturday night as a place where people with mental ill health can get together, share a meal and have fun. The club is popular and John and Liz feel that they are doing something that really use their skills and that people value.   They don’t earn anything from this enterprise and don’t want to – their satisfaction comes from doing something that they love and that helps people struggling with the same problems that they have struggled with. ‘We are often asked why we give out time to this group and it is because we want to give back. We understand and have been through services ourselves......people need to understand why this service is so greatly needed. There is no other place for people to enjoy a social life and feel comfortable in each other’s presence... there is no other place for people to go, the weekends can be very lonely and people feel more and more isolated. This group fills the gap’

While this concept has evolved from our work with people with personal budgets it is proving of real interest to organisations working with people on long term benefits who often lack confidence in themselves and their own abilities. One housing association in Northern Ireland, for example, sees this approach as a great way to help tenants gain confidence, work skills  and improve their employability.  Having said that, entrepreneurial volunteering should not be seen solely as a route into work.  Running a successful business is a huge ask and for many people out of reach. But many people have gifts and skills that they would like to use to benefit other people – and for them entrepreneurial volunteering can be an end in itself and great way forward.

*not their real names

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk

Hi my name is Mike* and I recently featured in the Community Catalysts’ newsletter. Glad you could log on so you can follow my story. Every month I will give you part of my story from the beginning, hope you find it interesting.

Hi my name is, well I could be you? I’ve been part of the mental health system since 1994; my illness is mainly due to the misuse of drugs and alcohol. I left school in 1981, around about that time industry work was becoming harder to find in the U.K, due to the way our world was changing. More and more manufacturing jobs were going overseas which caused a rise in unemployment, luckily enough I landed a labourers job with a building firm. It only gave me six weeks work but gave me my first steps into what was to be my main source of employment.

After a wearing out a lot of shoe leather and many part time jobs, the whole process of starting and stopping working was having a negative effect on me. Then in 1985 I started as an odd carrier for the very first firm I worked for. That lasted a total of about nine months and I received my last pay packet on my twenty-first birthday, from which I dusted myself off and had one hell of a party. This lasted three days which I now feel was the first steps to a bitter symphony. I started to drink quite heavy shortly after the Christmas of 1985 and began to feel bitter about my run of bad luck on the employment front, for some reason I just seemed to give up and not look for work anymore.

I was beginning to isolate myself from the outside world which became the biggest mistake I ever made in my life!

Everything was becoming empty after about six months and filling myself up with drink and taking some drug or other as a source of comfort was now becoming a bad habit. I was beginning to be able to justify my misfortune on something other than my own ability to find work and my attitude towards what I hoped to achieve. The way I saw things was starting to spin the opposite way round on its axis, you could say I just stopped caring not just about working but more importantly for myself and ashamedly, those who were around me.

My habitual alcohol and drug taking carried on for the next three long uneventful years not really socializing except for signing on or making conversation with whoever I met. When I did eventually venture outside my feelings of self worth dropped off the map. Around about the March of 1988 the opportunity of work came knocking at my door, it was well founded in that I got to work around the country enjoying different scenery and meeting new people.

Please log on next month and see where this work takes me. Mike

·        *Not his real name

W: www.communitycatalysts.co.uk