Making it Real board
About the Making it Real board
“We all want to live in the place we call home with the people and things that we love, in communities where we look out for one another, doing the things that matter to us.” #SocialCareFuture
What is the Making it Real board?
Shropshire’s Making it Real board is made up of Experts by Experience, practitioners and representatives of voluntary organisations.
It uses the principles of the Making it Real framework to ensure that people who are Experts by Experience are at the centre of the design and delivery of care and support. This can be either at a personal and individual level or working together on developing policies and strategies.
The Making it Real’s national framework and the set of statements describes what good, person-centred, personalised care and support looks like.
Shropshire Council is committed to Making it Real and the principles and values of personalisation:
- Co-production
- Organisations and individuals working together as equals
- Community-led support
Shropshire’s Making it Real board believes that ‘people want to have a life, not a service’ and that people’s care and support should be designed and delivered best with them - enabling choice and control.
To achieve its ambitions in Shropshire, the Making it Real board needs to ensure that people are at the heart of everything:
- People are involved as equal partners in designing their care and support
- Support is built around people’s strengths, networks of support and community
- There is proactive feedback on people’s experiences
- We all recognise the value of unpaid carers and recognise their own support needs
- Experts by Experience are involved from the beginning in designing policies and strategies that will affect not just them, not just now, but also social care in the future
Shropshire Council is making progress in putting these ambitions and practices in place. The Making it Real board Expert by Experience members support ways of doing things better by keeping focused on the Making it Real principles and values and keeping them real to life in Shropshire.
What does the Making it Real board do?
Here are a few examples of the board’s work:
- Looking at the information Adult Social Care sends to people and advising how it could be written in everyday language, without jargon, to make it easier to understand
- Developing new policies which are written clearly for people and not just for professionals eg the council’s Direct Payments policy. The board worked with Adult Social Care to demonstrate to teams the benefits of direct payments which are easy to manage and give choice and control
- Advising Adult Social Care on how assistive technology can be better promoted so people have more choice about how they are supported
- Helping council staff to become more inclusive and aware of individual needs, so that people become more in control of their daily life choices
- Reviewing experiences of carer support and laying the foundations for new ways of working, such as the establishment of the Carers Support Service
For future Making it Real board meeting and working group dates please check the board activities webpage.
We're always looking for new members to join the board. If you'd like to join the Making it Real Board, find out more information on our 'How to get involved' page.