In Control

I have spent many years trying to promote ideas of user involvement and person-centred approaches to service delivery. With this in mind, one of the ideas that always appealed to me was the idea of self-directed support and individualised budgets. When I worked in the voluntary sector I always felt that this was a way that people really could take control of their own lives. However after quite a bit of study of this, I came to the conclusion that there was no way that it could happen, as it required the local authority to adopt a system of individual budgets. Well here I am now on the other side and that is precisely the road we are going down. We have signed up to the In Control system and will hope to roll this out. The following is a link to a Community Care article on self-directed support http://tiny.cc/s11Ep

This shows that In Control, as well as providing the support that people need in a way that suits them, can also save money. This is a great help to me. My goal is to provide people with better services, but I am surrounded by many people who simply want to cut costs. I am more than happy to highlight the money saving aspect if I have to, but to me that will never be what it is about!