Cross-sector knowledge vital for Valuing People success

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.”