- Advice
- Working with statutory services
Working with statutory services
Working with statutory services was one of the most significant challenges many projects faced. Services were often reluctant to work alongside families or support projects that were so different to what they have to offer locally.
Building relationships with social workers, commissioners, Adult Social Care and Continuing Health Care was important to families but not always easy.
Families suggest keeping everyone up to date on progress, whilst not seeking permission to move forward. As well as keeping accurate information on meetings and being prepared to take on actions themselves.
"The council paid lip service but didn’t come up with positive ideas, they were very careful what they committed to."
All partners are disconnected, and no one wants to take the lead, there was no progress for ages, between meetings no one would take responsibility. As parents we had to step up and project manage.
The most challenging area is trying to convince the local authority that the project will work. They are generally sceptical and risk averse. JMS trust have been extremely supportive and the grant was really helpful in terms of convincing the local authority that we were serious.
Working with Continuing Health Care was like wading through Treacle, their staff turnover was really high and their bareface lying nearly broke us. We were evidencing the girls needs till we were blue in the face but they wouldn’t talk about life outside of medical issues. They told us ‘we don’t cover social care’… they were really risk averse too and couldn’t understand doing all the activities they do. It was working with our MP that made CHC happen for us
The Local Authority was not as helpful, they weren’t ready to sign off on packages till the last minute and that left things in limbo and left us fighting, we could have lost the building at one point
CHC said to us early on ‘we can fill this house’ but then never came through with it. They did nothing. They are always fighting fires and said they wouldn’t help us until we were much further down the line. We couldn’t wait that long. They were talking about starting to look for providers 6 weeks before they moved in – that would never have worked.