Social Care Managers and Service Users

Oliver Pool MBPsS

oliver@askjules.co.uk
 SMA Type II
 Severe neuromuscular disability
 24/7 mixed care package
 Been using Personalisation for 6 years
 Employ a team of 4 Carers/PAs
 Run a business that utilises Personalisation
 Published research on Exploring Independent
Living in the lives of disabled people
 Trainee Psychotherapist
Dichotomy of Health and Social
Care Approaches

Medical Disability
Model Social Model

Direct
Service Personalisation
Provider

Choice &
No Choice or
Control
Control
 It is concerned with modernization of
outdated prescriptive method of delivering
care.
 Empowering those vulnerable people with
choice and control over supportive services.
 To allow disabled people to become fully
integrated into society.
◦ Occupationally
◦ Socially
◦ Academically
 Risk Assessment / Risk Aversion vs Service
User Self Risk for Independence

 Tight Financial Management vs Contingencies

 Budget Cuts vs Human Resources

 Service User Bespoke Training vs Agency

Mandatory Training
 Biggest risk to me was a chest infection
stemming from a common cold.
 My social worker allowed me to control my
risk of chest infection by re arranging staff
who are sick.
 Catching cold avoided thus risk of chest
infection avoided.
 A tight budget means that if emergencies
occur then the service user is at serious risk.
 Contingency plans are crucial to any care
plan.
 The tension lies between unused annual
contingency funds being returned
subsequently service user encounters a crisis
and now no extra money readily available to
support through the emergency.
 Budget cuts can result in increase of cost of
service user’s budget overall .
 Lowering of salary to staff.
 Loss of staff.
 Advertising is an expensive irregular cost to the
budget but because service user cannot keep
staff due to low pay
 Service user has to spend funds to find and
employ new staff.
 Resulting in high need of emergency care
provisions and advertising costs = More
expensive
 For example…
 My client is a Paralympics sailor studying Physics
at University.
 His team required specific PAs to match his
educational and sporting ambitions.
 He was passionate about training his staff.
 His experience of previous agency staff was that
they challenged his approach to the way he
wanted his care to be done.
 Therefore Agency Mandatory Training wasn’t
appropriate for my client.
 Both Social Worker and Service User establish
a relationship with common purposes and
outcomes.

 This relationship is the catalyst for

overcoming tensions because it provides
understandings for both social workers and
service users of each others point of view.
 Any Questions?
 If you want to contact me or think of a
question feel free to me email at...
oliver@askjules.co.uk