by Richard West

On Wednesday (24th June) I went to a launch of the Valuing People Now Employment plan. Anne Williams and Scott Watkins, the national learning disability co-directors, talked about the plan.

It was an interesting talk about what it means for people with learning disabilities getting jobs. It made me think what does this all mean for BME people with a learning disability?

by Richard West

I went to the launch of the Voices Into Action today, a report by the Care Quality Commission about how they will involve people and work with us to improve services.

by Andrew Holman

Last week the long awaited employment strategy for people with learning disabilities was launched - I think!

by Peter Corser

George Robertson was secretary-general of Nato in the late 1990s. When trying to persuade all the countries to agree a uniformed response to a particular issue he said it was like "trying to move a dozen frogs in a wheelbarrow". This made me laugh when I heard it. However, it took 10 years for me to appreciate the true meaning of the phrase. The realisation came once I had become an approved social worker (a role that has now been replaced by approved mental health professionals) and had the task of trying to arrange for an ambulance and a police car to arrive at the same place at the same time to take a person to hospital.

by Simon Stevens

Summer is upon us and so it's time for our annual dose of Big Brother. After blind Mikey last year I was looking forward to the producers upping the stakes for the latest series and perhaps putting young people with moderate cerebral palsy and a speech impairment in the house - and I am not hinting at myself. However, the key word in describing housemates this year has been "fit".

by Nora Duckett

It will have skipped no reader's attention that social work is facing a major crisis and experiencing an unprecedented level of scrutiny from MPs to agony aunts, each with their own ideas about social work's failings, how it should operate and how it should pay for its perceived failures. What is missing from all this is the voice of social workers themselves and without a voice social work is in a very weak position, and unable to fight for itself how can it possibly fight for those it aims to represent; the disenfranchised and the marginalised.

by Peter Beresford

After much delay the publication date of the government's green paper on the future of adult social care was set for early July 2009. Given the difficult political and economic times we now live in, it is hard to imagine how this consultation document could ever match the enormous expectations that were originally placed on it when, little more than a year ago, the government committed itself to a radical new policy of personalisation and self-directed support.

 by Allan Norman

When we represented a junior social worker who exposed the corrupt practices of her team manager, we were representing someone whose decision to speak out was not easy. The person she felt she had to expose had decades of experience as a social work practitioner; she was newly qualified. The person she felt she had to expose was in management, as were those who would consider any grievance or disciplinary matters, but she was not.

And all she was going on was her conviction that her very experienced team manager shouldn't be telling her it was acceptable to lie to the court. The emergence of her manager's criminal conviction came later. The fabrication of evidence came later still in the case. Could she feel confident that her professional career would survive intact? No.

by Julie Marriott

Imagine a public toilet floor - filthy and grimy from use. Now imagine having to put your vulnerable and most precious gift on that toilet floor - your child. I have to do this on a regular basis with my 11 year old son Toby, who has profound and multiple learning disabilities and Pitt Hopkins Syndrome and is doubly incontinent.  

by Richard Garside

It is easy to see the main challenge facing the voluntary sector largely as one of adaptation to the contract culture. "The reform of public sector provision will require charities to be more business-minded than ever," the chief executive of the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations, Stephen Bubb, has said. But what are the nature of the changes that voluntary sector organisations are being asked to embrace? What are the consequences for their identity and values, mission and independence, as well as for their beneficiaries?