Here is an article about Time Together that was written for the Wales Alliance for Citizen Directed support website, you can find more stories about Citizen Directed Support in Wales at their website at wacds.org.uk
‘Good quality personal care is all very well but what we want is a full address book’.
This was what the tenants who have learning disabilities that I support told me at a board meeting early last year. I recognised this deeply at a personal level, this feeling of belonging is really important, it is the knowledge that people around you rely on you and would miss you if you weren’t there. Within the Consortium we have worked on this as a community, a community of staff, tenants, colleagues and family members. I have become very proud of our AGMs which are big enthusiastic affairs bringing together an unusual combination of, food, dancing, and ‘governance’. However I started having a nagging anxiety that while being active in the community we had not helped the people that we serve to be active parts of it.
The problem was the personal care label based silo that our services are commissioned within; we have become very efficient in focusing on the care and the label and not the person. There is much talk of the use of personal budgets and supporting people to have choice and control over the services that they use. This is clearly revolutionary but still feels like it is missing something pretty fundamental – other people.
- How could everybody get involved with the people around in them in ways that they had something to offer, as well as meeting their own needs?
- How could we as an agency contribute towards closer communities in which it is easier for; people to get to know each other, find people wanting to do similar things, and use their skills to make a difference in the world around them?
People in City and County of Swansea Social Services Department were very keen on finding ways to make our communities places where it is easier for all citizens to help and support each other. They saw this as a key element in the process of making services ‘person centred’ and ‘citizen directed’. We decided that we needed to conduct an experiment in partnership with all the people in one community in Swansea.
This felt more like it, we were thinking not just about better services for a particular group of people, but making a contribution towards something we all need which are stronger more mutually supportive communities. The problem was where to start.
We started having discussions with Timebanking Wales who had been very involved in the setting up of the ‘Blaengawr Time Centre’ this was a bold experiment in Locality Building which after 3 years had 540 participants and was generating 58,000 hours per year of active mutually supportive citizenship. These discussions led to a proposal in September 2009 for a 3 year project based in Gorseinon called ‘Time Together’. This project was to be one of the 4 experiments that would take place as part of Swansea’s Adult Social Services Transformation Process.
Time Together aims to bring citizens, professionals, agencies and community groups together in a collaborative partnership to maximise the continuing wellbeing of people living in the Gorseinon area.
It is to have 2 main elements:
- A Wellbeing Network – This is network that people can join where they share the things they are looking for to live their lives, as well as the things that they wish to contribute to make the network help others. This information is collated so that people can be put in touch with others who either are looking for similar things or can help out. People who get involved are thanked with time credits which can be redeemed for a growing list of community activities, such as community cinema or access to events being organised locally. This Network is starting off with 60 people who are currently involved using social care services and 40 people already involved in community activities, but we want it to become open to anyone in the Gorseinon area.
- A Wellbeing Alliance – The Alliance is made up of organisations that provide and commission services as well as community groups. This Alliance will support the growing Network; develop the time currency, as well as finding better ways to deliver support to people in Gorseinon.
We are going to try out some new ways of helping everybody to communicate together through this process including using ‘Swansea People’ which is a internet social networking tool that has been designed with City and County of Swansea that lets people simply share news and information in words, pictures and video. It also has some great tools to create shared maps and opinions about local issues.
It is early days with this project but we are being joined by some excellent partners. Gorseinon Development Trust are on board and are recruiting a worker to support the time bank, they are also providing the links to community groups and businesses that we need. We also have support from Community Education and interest and support from health services.
At the moment there is a lot to do, we are:
- Inviting the first 100 citizens to join the network;
- Interviewing community groups so that we can produce a detailed ‘whats on’ in Gorseinon
- Working out how citizens can exchange the first 6,000 time credits.
How will this help to improve the wellbeing of people living in Gorseinon?
Well it is an experiment, but we think …..
- It will help people to get to know each other and make it easier and rewarding to get involved and contribute to the community.
- It will help to create more locally owned, person centred joined up services.
- If people get to know each other better we can use direct payments and other approaches to help them organise their own services in ways that work better for them.
- We can organise locally and create more employment for people who live in the community.
- We can all organise supports with less waste, more efficiency and greater sustainability.
The Time Together project team is being led by Cathy Murray of City and County of Swansea.
This story was written by Rick Wilson of Community Lives Consortium.
