Local Area Coordination in England and Wales

So what, what next?
The project was designed by the Transforming Care empowerment steering group to look at ways of supporting people with a learning disability or autism who have recently been discharged from hospital to explore their skills and passions and to find ways to contribute these to their local communities. The project culminated in a final report available here

Connecting Communities Learning Report
The British Red Cross and Co-op have been working in a Charity Partnership since 2015 to tackle loneliness and social isolation in the UK. To address these challenges the British Red Cross and Co-op launched new Community Connector services to reconnect people who are experiencing loneliness back to their communities. To share insight and learn from others working in similar services, a UK-wide learning programme took place between April and July 2018. This brought together more than 50 ‘connector’ schemes across four learning events which included Local Area Coordination. Read the full report here and the summary here

A taxing question: How to pay for free personal care
Independent Age commissioned Grant Thornton UK LLP to create a model identifying how much money would be generated by a number of different available government policy options to fill the social care funding gap in England. They also asked the Social Market Foundation to look at the financial impact these policy options would have on individuals of different ages, with different income and wealth and produced this report from that analysis. Read more

Citizen Network newsletter
The latest Citizen Network newsletter is available here. The Citizen Network is an international movement to achieve citizenship for all.

Earlier this month SCIE hosted a webinar to discuss the forthcoming changes to the Mental Health Act and the Mental Capacity Act. The webinar reflected on the important changes in how people's rights are protected. A panel of policy and practice experts in both pieces of legislation helped practitioners, academics and others reflect on these important changes.

The panel, chaired by SCIE’s practice development manager Hugh Constant, was:

• Ilora Finlay, Baroness Finlay of Llandaff - Welsh doctor, professor of palliative medicine, and an Independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords
• Rachel Griffiths - National Professional Advisor to the CQC on the Mental Capacity Act and a MCA and Human rights specialist
• Mark Trewin - Mental Health Social Care Advisor to the DoHSC and NHSE for the Mental Health Act Review and the Joint Special Interest Group Lead for Social Care and Social Work with the Positive Practice Collaborative for Mental Health
• Steve Gilbert - A Vice Chair of the Mental Health Act Review and Serious Mental Illness Living Experience Consultant.

Watch the webinar here