Shared Lives: social care’s best kept secret

The Shared Lives scheme offers a unique solution to the social care crisis, matching people with learning disabilities with certified carers who provide support within a family home. This article explains the benefits of sharing lives and homes.

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If you were to read anything recently about social care, you would be forgiven for thinking everything is hopeless. Cuts to services, recruitment problems, hospitals unable to discharge people, safeguarding scandals – stories about social care make grim reading.

However, at Shared Lives Plus – the national charity for Shared Lives – we are of the view that better social care is possible. As an organisation, we subscribe to the vision adopted by Social Care Future, a grassroots movement for change in social care, that: ‘We all want to live at a place we call home, with the people and things we love, in communities where we look out for each other, doing the things that matter most.’

How does the Shared Lives scheme work?

Shared Lives is a unique approach to social care that involves a self-employed, approved Shared Lives carer being matched with someone who needs support, with that person then living with or regularly visiting the carer.

As a model of care, Shared Lives has a long history, starting out as what were once called adult placements. The majority of people supported through Shared Lives are people with learning disabilities (73% of the total), but the scheme also supports a growing number of people with dementia, young people leaving care, survivors of domestic abuse and people with physical disabilities.

According to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in England, and with similar ratings in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, Shared Lives is the highest-quality and safest form of social care, with 97% of schemes (the local teams that organise Shared Lives) rated good or outstanding.

If you go to the Social Care Future website, you will see a section called Glimpses of the Future, which includes examples of excellent social care which we want to see more of. Shared Lives is one such example!

It is also a cheaper way to provide care, with the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) finding that it saves an average of £ 26k per person with learning disabilities compared to supported living.

Raising awareness

Whilst the Shared Lives scheme has grown over the years, it currently accounts for only 1% of adult social care provision. But why is this? Firstly, public awareness of the Shared Lives scheme is low. There are amazing opportunities across England for people with kind hearts and a desire to share their lives to become paid Shared Lives carers, but few know about it.

There are also various problems facing local authorities, who fund most of the Shared Lives arrangements. As in many caring professions, local authorities are facing huge budget pressures, and Shared Lives carers are not paid as well as they should be, making recruitment difficult. This must change, and at Shared Lives Plus, we do a lot of work to campaign for fairer fees for carers.

Finally, social workers, often changing their roles or leaving the profession, either do not know about Shared Lives or find it difficult to make time for a referral, as it tends to take slightly longer than other referrals.

Making a referral

Referrals are usually made by social workers directly to the Shared Lives scheme. Most schemes will have a clear, tried-and-tested process to support referrals.

Many schemes welcome an informal discussion about the potential referral before sharing documentation, and family members are encouraged to be involved in the referral process.

A referral to Shared Lives requires many of the usual documents for a referral to be completed, including a Care Act Assessment and a Care and Support Plan, but it will also require a Shared Lives referral form (each scheme will have one).

What are the benefits of the Shared Lives scheme?

The benefits for people living in Shared Lives are wide-ranging. People who are supported in a Shared Lives arrangement live in a home setting which provides a welcoming, friendly and safe space, which is often missing when people live on their own or in less personalised settings.

Support is flexible to meet the individual’s needs, and they are empowered to be fully involved in decisions about their lives and how they spend their time. Other benefits include:

• Continuous, consistent support
• Living as part of a family and the chance to experience family life
• Opportunities to make new friends and develop meaningful, long-lasting relationships with others
• The chance to learn new skills and have new experiences
• Support to access volunteering, education or work opportunities
• Learning to cook their own meals
• Learning how to manage their own money
• Building confidence and independence
• Joining their Shared Lives carer on family holidays.

For the families and friends of those who are supported, Shared Lives can provide a meaningful alternative to mainstream housing arrangements. Families choose Shared Lives because it provides care and support that are different: a home-from-home and a support network for their loved one. It can also provide a stepping stone for young people to become independent and move forward with their lives.

One of the things that makes Shared Lives very different from other forms of support is the matching process – this is when the person requiring support is matched with a carer.

The matching and introduction processes ensure that Shared Lives carers and individuals can get to know each other and ‘test drive’ an arrangement before entering into it. This approach enables both parties to make an informed decision about whether to go ahead with this model of support.

However, not all social workers are aware of Shared Lives, and they may not be appropriately trained on the scheme or have experience in submitting a successful referral. Thankfully, we think that these circumstances are about to change for the better.

Looking to the future

Recently, while visiting a Shared Lives carer and the women she supports in Oxfordshire, the former Minister of State for Social Care, Helen Whately MP, announced a big investment into Shared Lives through the new Accelerating Reform Fund.

She said: “I visited the home of Sarah, a Shared Lives carer in Wantage, and at her home I saw what she does for people who spend time in her home, like Ruthie who has Down’s Syndrome and goes there for short breaks, and Sammy who originally came for a brief stay with Sarah and two years later is still there, because in Sarah she found the family she needed but never had before.

“So, when I talk about choice and diversity in social care and avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach, I think Shared Lives is one of the most brilliant examples of that.”

We welcome this investment, but we have a long way to go – we need to ensure that any new investment in the sector is sustained and that these encouraging words are followed with action. Increasing the fees given to carers is important, as is raising public awareness about this amazing form of support.

We therefore encourage families to read up about Shared Lives and talk through this option with your social worker or a practitioner. We need more people to share their lives and homes!

 

 

Ewan King, Chief Executive, Shared Lives Plus.

This article was first published in the Housing Edition of our free digital magazine, In Focus.