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Care workers must find out what the priorities of people working in other sectors are in order to make Valuing People work, said the government's head of learning difficulty strategy.

Rob Greig, director of implementation for Valuing People, told delegates that they should arm themselves with knowledge about the responsibilties of other sectors such as housing.

He said one of the downsides of the white paper was the £22m allocated to implement it, which is said by many working in the field to be too little to achieve the reform it sets out.


But Greig said: "There's a lot of other money around and people working in other fields who can really help make inclusion happen."

The way to gain more funds from other sectors was to "find out what the priorities are in other sectors and approach this from how we can help them achieve those targets".

Greig said care workers should recognise that they were not experts in every field and should use the expertise of those working in other sectors to, for example, find employment opportunities for people with learning difficulties. Only then could the vision set out in Valuing People be achieved, he said.


He worried too that some professionals were having problems getting to grips with the concept of person-centred planning, which he feared had been misunderstood as care management by another name.

Complaining that too often the families of people with learning difficulties had not been listened to, Greig added: "We have ignored families too much and Valuing People must be a new deal for families too."