Community Catalysts

Stop Bashing – and Start Boosting – Micro-Enterprise

JillWighton — Tue, 08 May 2012 15:22:31 +0000

Community Catalysts and Shared Lives Plus have just published Ten Ways to Stop Bashing – and Start Boosting – Micro – Enterprise . The document shares real life examples of micro enterprises and some of the barriers and challenges they face. It also details the steps local councils could take to facilitate more micro-enterprises offering support solutions for older and disabled people.

People in communities have many untapped gifts and skills and can use those to set up their own micro-enterprise. Micro- enterprises can provide real choice of local, personalised and high quality social care and health services (in the broadest sense) for local people looking for support. Services may be delivered on a voluntary basis, as part of a cooperative or as a small social enterprise or business. In all cases, because of their size they are more likely to be responsive to individual or quirky requirements.

Community Catalysts works with local partners such as local authorities, and health authorities who recognise the potential of ‘people on their front doorstep’ to deliver local personalised solutions for other people in their community. Partners recognise the importance of the tailored help that Community Catalysts provides to these enterprising people in order to make sure that the services they provide are good quality, legal and sustainable.

Alex Fox, Shared Lives Plus Chief Executive said: “Local authorities play a crucial role in fostering vibrant local care and support enterprises. If councils get it wrong, micro-enterprises close down. But if they get it right – the market flourishes bringing an unimaginable variety of choice and control to all care and support users.”

Sian Lockwood, Chief Executive of Community Catalysts added: “The guide focuses on what the solutions look like to avoid the challenges we have seen in the real world. From the reduction of red tape to promoting entrepreneurial thinking, all local authorities and their officers at all levels, have the opportunity to shine in their support for the micro-enterprise market.”

Sian Lockwood continues: “It’s not even about money most of the time. The typical success rate for start-ups without support is 10%. We’ve improved that to 83% where local authorities provide the right kind of assistance.” SL-Ten_Ways_final

Royal invite to garden party

JillWighton — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 16:09:44 +0000

Representatives from the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS)put forward Sue and Yvonne from Companions to attend the Royal Garden party as they felt that they should be recognised for all the wonderful work that they do. Companions provide help that older people want and need; primarily in a rural part of Oldham including companionship, helping with daily tasks in and out of the house, supporting people in their local community for meals out, to meet friends, shopping or to attend appointments. Sue met Rachel from BIS at a meeting in Oldham with Helen Allen from Community Catalysts to discuss some of the real barriers that can impede the delivery of a small tailored service, in order for the Department to make suitable changes. Sue’s passion and commitment obviously shone through and Rachel felt that she should be recognised for the hard work and dedication that has been needed to initiate and sustain a valued service. Sue says; ‘we are over the moon to be attending the Garden Party- that’s something different for our leaflets! So often small and micro services go unrecognised- it is great to be flying the flag for small providers everywhere!’

Inspirational micro services…or…

JillWighton — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:01:19 +0000

Inspirational micro services…or…
Spending time with the Green Team

Helen Allen, Operations Manager and Lorna Reid, Dudley Micro Services Coordinator recently spent some time with some inspirational micro providers and the people who use their services.

The Green Team is a micro service set up and managed by entrepreneurs Wendy, Jane and Neil. All 3 providers used to be support workers in a council run day service. They knew about personalisation and the planned changes to local day services. They were sure they could run something similar to the service they worked in but delivered in a more person centred and quirky way.

The Green Team support people with learning disabilities to undertake tasks such as gardening and grounds maintenance; helping them to learn new skills and develop confidence along the way. They work very closely with local organisations, Dudley Canal Trust, Dudley Leisure Centre and Abbey Road Allotment Association. The Green Team are based at Dudley Canal Trust’s waterways building but use this as base from which to work in the wider community. Up to 8 people with a learning disability use service each day.

Neil, Wendy and Jane were mindful not to replicate traditional day services and they have mirrored the development of the Green Team with a passion for person centred support and a clear commitment to ensure that the people who use the service have a real say in how their support is provided. Neil stated “We made a conscious effort to ensure that support provided was person centred and that we could monitor the progress of the guys that attend to ensure that there is ongoing progression….we don’t want to hold anyone back, it’s all about moving forward”.

Neil went on to say “we are also supporting those who may want to work in the future, by enabling them to gain work skills through valued volunteering as part of the gardening and grounds maintenance projects we have”

Lorna Reid has been supporting the Green Team, (who has just been awarded the Silver Quality Mark) since 2010. “Lorna’s help and support has been invaluable, I don’t know what we would have done without her” asserts Jane.

Lorna stated “visiting the Green Team was inspirational. The guys who attend gave us a run down of the activities they did and what they had achieved in a short space of time. It was so overwhelming to see the confidence in people’s eyes as they took us around the canal site”. Small outcomes can obviously speak volumes………

Job Opportunity in Hertfordshire

JillWighton — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:22:30 +0000

Advert for Herts Micro Market Coordinator

Could you be the Micro Market Coordinator in Hertfordshire? For more details have a look at our advert. Closing date 3rd May at 5.00 pm

SHARED LIVES: GREAT OUTCOMES, GREAT SAVINGS

Sian Lockwood — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 14:37:40 +0000

Many of you will have seen the article in the Saturday Telegraph magazine this week about a Shared Lives family in West Wales (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/9162817/Shared-Lives-the-families-who-foster-vulnerable-adults.html). It is a wonderful description of the way Shared Lives works for everyone involved and comments from people responding to the web-version of the article were heart-warmingly appreciative. But this is not an unusual family – Shared Lives across the UK has many stories like this in which people who need some support have the opportunity to share and enrich the lives of the people supporting them. Everyone involved would say they benefit and for people needing support the service they get is far more individual than can be provided by more traditional providers.
The great outcomes provided through Shared Lives should be enough justification in themselves for local authority commissioners. The cost-argument though is even more compelling! I recently carried out a cost-comparison for a medium-sized local authority-run Shared Lives scheme. Just under 100 people were living (in ones and twos) with Shared Lives families. I compared the cost of their support with the cost of providing the same people with residential care or supported tenancies, using the 2011 figures provided by the Personal Social Services Research Unit. I was extremely careful to ensure we compared like-for-like (eg: adding the cost of the Scheme and day care costs to the payments to the Shared Lives carers) and was astounded by the savings. Comparing costs with residential care the savings generated by Shared Lives were an amazing £2.5m – and even more (£3.75m) comparing Shared Lives costs against an equivalent supported tenancy.
Great outcomes and really significant savings……….and yet in many parts of the UK Shared Lives is marginalised and under-resourced. Why on earth isn’t every cash-strapped local authority in the country that cares about the well-being of its people investing in Shared Lives? It seems completely perverse – but part of the reason lies with the very ordinariness of Shared Lives. Shared Lives families don’t see themselves as out of the ordinary or even as providing a service. People supported in Shared Lives arrangements don’t think of themselves as receiving a service. We need to shout louder about Shared Lives – and this article in the Saturday Telegraph provides a great platform. We also need to find ways to make sure local authorities understand the financial argument – then surely Shared Lives will receive the value and investment it needs so as many people as possible can benefit.

What do we want Enterprise to do for us?

JillWighton — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 08:08:06 +0000

This is an important question and one that is rarely given serious consideration. Of course more entrepreneurs means more wealth means better communities. Right?

Perhaps. Perhaps not.

In the current context most enterprise programmes focus on finding individual entrepreneurs and helping them to find ways of making their business ideas work. There is a good chance that as soon as this happens the entrepreneur will find their new found success gives them the option of leaving the community for a more prosperous one. This is because their success has been in spite of the local community and not because of it. The community is something to be escaped from. This approach to enterprise in the community plays up the role of the entrepreneur as individualistic hero(ine) fighting against the odds. If it succeeds then the community is actually weakened as successful people are able to leave.

So if we want enterprise to enable individuals to succeed and escape ‘deprived communities’ then this sort of individualistic approach to enterprise can work.

However if our goal is to transform communities through enterprise then we need to adopt very different models of enterprise development. We need to develop a context in which enterprise can succeed BECAUSE of the community context and not in spite of it. Where success ties enterprise into the community rather than provides a spring board out of it. Only when we learn how to nurture this type of enterprise development will it become a tool to really transform communities as well as individuals.

These transformational approaches emphasise enterprise as a social phenomenon. They bring people together to collaborate on possibilities and to develop stories of hope and change. They emphasise the role of the local community in supporting enterprise with patronage but also with advice, support, guidance and introductions. They build enterprise services where local people can succeed in making progress because of their communities rather than in spite of them.

If we want to succeed in transforming communities through enterprise then this needs to be given some serious consideration.

The ability of projects to build social capital and to raise the collective understanding of enterprise and the role of the community in supporting it, as well raising the ability and potential of individual entrepreneurs will be key.

So what do we want enterprise to do for us?

This blog was written by Mike Chitty follow him on http://bit.ly/wSxzGs

Micro provider attains Silver Quality mark award!!!!!!

JillWighton — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 11:44:59 +0000

Three former Dudley Council care workers, who set up their own social care enterprise are celebrating after gaining the Silver Quality mark award. Charlene Romano, Tracey Lissimore and Wendy Garbett run Cloverleaf, a micro provider community group for adults with learning disabilities, based in Stourbridge in the Dudley borough.
Wendy Garbett said: “We are thrilled to be the first micro provider to be awarded the silver quality mark in Dudley. We set our social care business up in October 2010 and it is going very well, especially for the students who are really benefiting from the smaller size of the group.”
Lorna Reid, Micro Services Coordinator, added: “Achieving the quality mark seeks to demonstrate and provide assurance to existing and potential service users that the organisation is providing a quality service.”
Lorna has been supporting the group since March 2010 when the 3 aspiring providers decided they wanted to provide effective outcomes on a smaller scale for people with a learning disability when it was announced that the local authority were closing day services.
Clover Leaf Community group have achieved some great outcomes as a result of operating in a small group. Sharlene Romano stated “There are people who have significantly improved their communication skills since attending Clover Leaf – some who weren’t able to speak or socialise in the traditional day centres are now interacting with other students here”
Clover Leaf who operate 4 days a week are also members of the provider association network forum, which enabled them to meet with other micro providers to share ideas, issues and challenges they face as small providers. “It’s a great forum to be involved in and we’ve gained lots of useful information here, including having guest speakers and addressing some of the obstacles we had” said Sharlene.

Join a new Twitter chat group

JillWighton — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 11:06:50 +0000

When it comes to care and support services Community Catalysts are passionate about diversity and the need for the people who use them to have a real choice. We work all over the UK to support people and community groups to help them to set up and sustain small, high quality, local care and support services able to offer the kind of flexible, personal help that people need. We have been inspired time and time again by the people we work with, their passion, enthusiasm and tenacity and we LOVE the quirky, and imaginative services that they offer. We recognise the huge barriers these entrepreneurs and community groups face to get their service on a sustainable footing and we help where we can to minimise these barriers. We call these inspirational people micro social care and support enterprises but recognise this is a bit of a mouthful so often revert to ‘micro enterprises’ or ‘micro providers’ for ease.

Over the last few months we have become increasingly aware of the number of micro enterprises using social media to tell people about their work and to gain peer support from others fighting the same battles. With this in mind we have decided (from a starting point of almost total ignorance) to set up a twitter chat group for micro enterprise tweeps and users and anyone else with an interest in diverse and imaginative care services.

The first chat will take place on the 17th February at 3pm and the starting topic for discussion is “what can micro services offer to people who need care and support to live their lives”. You don’t have to do anything to join the twitter group except have a twitter account in the first place. The hashtag for the group is #microsc. When you go into your twitter account type #microsc and click on it and you will see all the things that people are saying . Then feel free to jump in and comment to anything that takes your fancy remembering of course to always write #microsc at the end of whatever you write so that everyone else can keep track.

We’ve never done this before so have no idea how it will go (or even if we are doing it right!) but we really really hope you will join us next Friday. If it is a success and people think we should establish it as a regular feature we can take it from there. I would be really grateful if anyone has any suggestions for future chat topics too.

Thanks to Shirley Ayres for all her advice on this and here is a great guide to twitter chats she sent to get us going that you might find useful if (like us) this is all a bit scarily new! http://bit.ly/ArP3sI

Empowering People – Unlocking Innovation event

JillWighton — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 15:45:42 +0000

Launch Event – Empowering People:Unlocking Innovation to be held on 31st January 2012 at Snibston Discovery Centre, Coalville from 9.45am -3.30pm.

This participative and interactive event will enable you to:

* learn more about the Innovation programme and ask questions

* find out about the Bursary application process

* hear about examples of personalised and co productive approaches from around the country

* participate in workshops and networking opportunities

* learn more about the Innovation Network and how you can get involved

* get thinking about an innovative idea for your service developme

Places are going fast so book on as soon as possible via the following link: http://unlockinginnovation.eventbrite.co.uk/

Climbing high for a good cause

Sian Lockwood — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 11:53:32 +0000

On 4th of January 2012 one of the Community Catalysts’ team Amy Timmins will be flying to Tanzania and embarking on a quest to stand on top of the roof of Africa. She writes: ‘We have been in training for this for over a year and want to use this opportunity to hopefully inspire some of you to support some of the charities we would like to rais money for.
We decided to pay for the climb so that every single penny we raise goes directly to the charities we are raising money for and not to pay for the expedition. We are travelling with the company Exodus who have run expeditions like this for several years and run the Porter Assistance Project to support the porters who work on the climb throughout the year.

The two charities we would like to raise money for mean a lot to me and I hope you value as equally worthy causes:
Breast Cancer Campaign: This national charity works by funding innovative world-class research to understand how breast cancer develops, leading to improved diagnosis, treatment, prevention and cure. Like so many, my family has been affected by this disease, I was fortunate enough that my grandma survived breast cancer and I would love to use this opportunity to help raise money to enable the reasearch to be done to help create more happy endings.
Birmingham Dogs’ Home: The charity has bases in Birmingham and Wolverhampton and does amazing work to ensure these wonderful and adorable animals can have a second chance at life and be brought back to good health after some have been brought to the home after experience awful cruelty. I have two rescue dogs and would advocate that people give these wonderful animals a wonderful life.

If you could spare 50p, £5 or even £50 you would be making a fantastic difference to the work these wonderful charities do. Ideally if you could split your donation between these causes, that would be fantastic, or if you’d rather donate to one particular cause, that’s also brilliant, as they say, every penny helps!
I am raising money through the website justgiving.com, and it is possible to donate money securely to either charity through these pages; see the link http://www.justgiving.com/teams/amyclimbskilimanjaro for more information.’