Community Lives Consortium

How did Swansea People develop?

Swansea People was developed by Swansea Learning Disability Provider Forum and the Web Developers CDSM.

The Provider Forum was set up by the Swansea Social Care and Health Planning Group for Learning Disability Services.

It is a group that has been in existence since 2002.

It exists to support better partnership working and best practice dissemination within agencies that support people who have a learning disability in Swansea.

We developed Swansea People as part of a wider agenda to support accessible information and communication for people who have a learning disability and their supporters in Swansea.

How did this development begin?

Swansea People grew out of:

• Things we had to do
• Things we wanted to do

Things we wanted to do

We wanted to:

• Develop something that helped to address some of the fractures we saw in people’s lives, especially those who had been resettled.
• Develop planning systems that naturally supported Active Support.
• Develop local Symbol and Picture banks that supported Inclusive Communication.
• Develop a communication system that was more Person Centred.

Things we had to do

Service Principles Service Responses stated clearly that we needed to think about a range of things that we weren't doing very well.

• Information - up to date and accessible.
• Service Users and supporters active participation in planning.
• Help to make informed choices.
• People central to planning their own lives.
• Developing Personal & Social Networks.
• Development of personal learning portfolio.

Our Joint review also gave us some clear expectations

• To improve service users’ and carers’ routine access to information on services, standards, entitlements and complaints processes

• To make better use of user and carer experience in setting standards and monitoring service quality
• Develop stronger quality assurance systems.

Approval to develop Swansea Lives and People

City and County of Swansea asked that the Swansea Provider Forum develop a website.

This website was to provide information about services for people who have a learning disability who live in the City & County of Swansea.

It was to also help people who have a learning disability and their supporters to share their views and opinions about services that they use in a open way.

The principle aims of these sites were to –

• Bring People together On-line.

This was to be funded by a combination of Local one-off monies and money over 3 years from Service Principles Service Responses.

First Swansea Lives was built:

• A common framework of information from each provider delivered in video, talking, text, pictures and symbols.
• Accessible animated help
• www.swansea-lives.com/

Making Computers available to service users

People thought Swansea Lives was great but how were we going to help tenants get access to computers.

Within Supported Housing Projects we looked at the HB regs, then we funded through service charges

• Broadband Connections alongside Line Rental as ‘Voice and Data Connection’.
• Computers as part of our Housing Management services, thus they were funded as part of our Housing Management Admin charge.

In Day services we have started to provide computers that people could use.

Thus we have 35% of people we know now have immediate access to a computer, there are still significant gaps.

We watched how people and their staff group started to use computers.

People liked MSN especially with Webcams, a lot of staff especially younger ones are experts at it.

Communication in Print was good it is easy to use and has massive symbol lists.

Powerpoint is great and a lot of people are more comfortable with it.

We needed something to underpin these tools, a cross between

• ‘Outlook’ with Symbols
• ‘Friends Reunited’ – but easier to use.

Something that would get people communicating.

Swansea People Arrives

Swansea People arrived in June 2006.

People have been very impressed.

People keep suggesting new uses for it.

It is challenging us to help people to express themselves in their own terms.

We now need to raise our game:

• To video rather than print,
• To record rather than write.

This means staff training, disseminating good practice and starting to look at things in a different way. 

Managing Lives not documenting services

The greatest significance is that this is one of the first tools which:

• Helps people to record and manage their life
• Not document the services that people use.

The content is theirs and remains theirs as they use different services.

This will promote long term growing personal histories documented in the first and second person collected in ways that actively involve the person and their network.

Service Users really approve

Our experience so far is that if we can support staff to actively encourage this, service users are very keen to get involved.

Speaking Up about their lives.

As people and their support teams become aware of People and Places.

Their ideas about the things that they want to post become more interesting.

They can use it to take more control of their services

Tenants are thinking about how they can create content to tell the people that support them how they want to be supported.

We are now working with a group of tenants to help them think about how they can run their service and keep in touch with their supporters using Swansea People.

Actively engaging staff in the process

We are also now thinking about how staff can use this tool more effectively.

New or unfamiliar staff are our tenants number 1 irritation.

We are intending to sign up all our staff to Swansea People, thus if they are to work with a tenant they can virtually meet the staff member.

As well as helping tenants this will also enable us to communicate more effectively with staff.

Building People and Places in the future

The most interesting things about the product are the ideas that you have once you start using it.

Once Neath Port Talbot came on board they made connections that we hadn’t and the product got better and more powerful.

We now have a growing list of ways we want to develop this:

My Money – Tools to help people manage their personal accounts and stay in touch with appointees and receivers.

My Health - Tools to help people to promote their own health.

Symbol / picture / sound event reminders – Full screen pop up reminders that it is time for an event to take place.

I.e. A picture of Mum appears when she is about to arrive for a scheduled visit.

Building links with developing service recording on-line tools so that service users get better access with recordings made about them.

We can build these and others through a growing partnership of application commissioners, developers and users.

Through this continued new investment supports greater and more effective functionality for everyone.