Overview
Between 2019 and 2023, as part of the Getting it Right – Strategic National Work stream, the CBF worked on projects that would have a national impact and that aligned with the themes of GIR. This work included:
- Responding and adapting to Covid-19
- Tackling inappropriate medication
- Supporting family carers to input into national policy consultations, including on the Bill of Rights, the Mental Capacity Act and Liberty Protection Safeguards, and the Draft Mental Health Bill
- Raising awareness of parent carer blame
- Developing strategic legal actions to uphold rights and get the right support
- Connecting families and support workers to improve and shape working relationships
- Increasing the representation and involvement of people with learning disabilities in the CB-NSG
- Identifying needs and providing support to family carers as they grow older
Next steps
Although the Getting it Right project has officially finished, the CBF is extending and expanding on some of the work that began as part of this project. You can read more about our ongoing work below.
Connecting Support Workers and Families
During the Getting it Right project, the CBF began working with Paradigm to bring together support workers and families to identify what needs to be in place to make relationships work.
As a continuation of this work, we ran two workshops for family carers and support workers in July 2023, with the aim of developing a resource that can be used by support workers and families to improve relationships during the transition period when someone with a severe learning disability moves to a new provider/home. This resource is currently being developed based on these workshops and we hope to share this in Winter 2023.
Increasing the Representation and Involvement of People with Learning Disabilities in the CB-NSG
In order to ensure that people with a learning disability are better represented as part of the CB-NSG, the CBF and people from and supported by Learning Disability England, SeeAbility, Achieve Together and Choice Support have worked to produce a film showing what is needed to have a good life, which was shown at the CB-NSG national meeting in June 2023.
This film featured Matt, Charlotte, Summer, Jo, Nathan, Tim, Crystal, Michael, Julian, Roger and Lisa sharing their views on what makes it possible to have a good life, what barriers there are, and what needs to be done in future.
Managing a Personalised Support Package and Growing Older as a Family Carer
Growing older with a learning disability, or as a family carer, is currently underrepresented in policy and practice. Through our work, the CBF became aware that many of the families we support have taken on managing complex personalised support packages to ensure that their loved ones get the right support, but have then found that as they grow older and have looked to ‘retire’, maintaining these bespoke packages and transitioning to having someone else take them over has proven complicated.
The CBF facilitated a focus group with family carers who either manage or have previously managed personalised support packages for their relatives, to find out about their experiences, including what has worked well and what has worked badly. They shared their views on what needs to happen and what support would be useful in achieving this.
The outcomes of this focus group have helped to inform the co-produced, lifelong action plan, as well as informing the CBF’s campaigning and policy work.