We are really pleased that we have been awarded Department of Health funding to develop a way of offering Shared Lives as holidays and breaks to people across local authority boundaries, in different areas of the country. There are Shared Lives carers who can provide short breaks living in seaside towns, national parks and in the heart of large cities. Others may live in areas which someone would like to visit because they have family there. The new scheme will mean that people will be able to look at an online catalogue to find out whether there is an approved Shared Lives carer in the area in which they would like to take a break or holiday. We will develop ways of Shared Lives schemes working together to ensure that the right matching and safeguarding processes are carried out before the break. These holidays will be a much cheaper and more homely alternative to visiting an expensive residential facility and we expect that some people will want to return to visit the same family year after year.
We are recruiting for a twelve-month project development worker to work with Shared Lives carers and schemes to develop matching, safeguarding, inter-scheme working and payment policies to enable safe and affordable Shared Lives arrangements to take place across county boundaries. The advert is here.
Escaping the invisible asylum 
Both as an ex-SL manager and current SL carer, I think this is a great idea. In my previous scheme we ended up approving and managing carers who lived approx 80 miles away on the coast, and they proved to be a great resource for holidays. We never expanded to offering them to other schemes, but it was planned that at some point we would.
This is very simple and very sensible. Love it! People’s lives do not fit within Local authority boundaries!
Hope you find a talented development worker to help you meet the full potential of this innovative approach. I hope also that many people build relationships and look forward to “repeat holidays”.
I echo Whose Shoes, I have a couple of family members who work in social services and they are constantly being frustrated by the restrictions imposed by a system thats clearly broken. Well done again on an excellent initiative!!
I was at the book launch yesterday of fab new Governance International / LGiU “Making Health and Social Care Personal and Local” book – http://bit.ly/KgWtrA . There was a suggestion that the long-awaited White Paper would be more around OUTCOMES than process or restrictions – if so, and if it oils the wheels for excellent schemes such as this, it might be worth waiting for…