Making it Real Shropshire

Making it Real Shropshire’s board is made up of Experts by Experience, practitioners, council officers & managers 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 board strongly supports the principle of including Experts by Experience and their families as equal partners in the planning, design, development, and evaluation from the outset and throughout the life of all adult social care services.

Experts by Experience, their families and the local community should be involved at the earliest possible stage of service development as equal partners. They're generally regarded as experts in knowing what support and services are needed to ensure individuals and families can live full and independent lives in a way that is genuinely “person-centred”.

The Making it Real’s national framework and the set of statements describes what good, person-centred, personalised care and support looks like.

Experts by Experience are people with lived experience of drawing on services either for themselves or a carer.

Practitioners are people who work for the council/NHS and people who provide services.

Our core values

Visions

  • Co-production: people using adult social care services have real choice and control in their support
  • Involvement: Experts by Experience are actively involved in designing services
  • Listening: to the views and experiences of individuals and families that need or have received care
  • Improvement: feedback from people with experience of all aspect of care is used to improve services

Co-production is where everybody works together on an equal basis to create a service or come to a decision that works for them all.

Ambitions

  • Feedback: social care services respond to feedback from partners, board members and individuals with experience of services and their carers - along with individuals who may have to use services in the future or who have an interested in social care
  • Showcase: examples of good practice and good news stories
  • Influence: the delivery and design of services

Priorities

  • Working: together as equals
  • Review: adult social care priorities and targets in line with the framework of the Adult Social Care Strategy and the Shropshire Plan
  • Ensure: that we continue to co-produce, improving care and services with input from everyone involved, including carees and carers

Adult Social Care Strategy: focus on ways to promote, maintain and enhance people's independence so that they are healthier, stronger, more resilient and less reliant on formal social care services.

The Shropshire Plan: the overarching strategic plan for Shropshire Council, providing a single point where the key components that direct our plans for the coming years can be found and accessed.

Working together

  • Co-production: working together to help shape services
  • Partnership: Experts by Experience, community groups, and representatives from services working in partnership to design and improve adult social care
  • Participation: gathering feedback from local communities
  • Support: Experts by Experience are enabled to participate in service design and improvement
  • Share: best practice across a range of partnership boards, working groups and with the public
  • Listen: to the collective voices of Experts by Experience and individuals
  • Working: co-productively to target improvements and influence change
  • Identify: areas for improvement and propose and implement changes based on real experience
  • Create: as well as identify opportunities to make things work better

Local Account: every year Shropshire Council produces a report which highlights the current picture of Adult Social Care in Shropshire. It tells the story of those who use adult social care services, their carers, as well as people from the council and other organisations who work to provide services across Shropshire.

Shropshire’s Local Account is titled ‘Making it Real in Shropshire – our story continues’. The idea has come from an organisation called Think Local Act Personal and their Making it Real initiative sets out what good, personalised care and support should look like. 

Impact and progress

  • Updates: Local Account stories will regularly reflect the lives and stories of real people
  • Monthly: the Making it Real board’s progress will be followed monthly on the Making it Real website
  • Annually: at the end of each year the board will produce and publish the Making it Real annual report