Former Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher famously said there is no such thing as society. As the present Conservative prime minister seeks to convince us that we do, indeed, need to be part of a "Big Society", it is worth taking time to look at the work of organisations such as NAAPS.
NAAPS is a UK charity that represents the interests of family-based and very small providers of care and support to older and disabled people. Its projects include Shared Lives, where people are paid an allowance to include somebody in their family life.
It is radically different to conventional social care, explains its new chief executive, Alex Fox, who argues that "too many councils still think their challenge is to change the way the money moves about, rather than to enable everyone to pursue an ordinary life, with family relationships, a community and a real job".
Fox says there is now real excitement about the possibilities of personalised care - and he says this despite acknowledging the huge challenge facing all care organisations, in a time of deep cuts.
"There's a lot of theorising about personalisation but our members are actually doing it and have been doing it for a while," he says. "This is a real opportunity to say that small is beautiful."
For Fox, there is no point in giving people individual budgets to spend on their own care, if they only have "the equivalent of the Tesco of social care" from which to buy services.
"Equally," he adds, "everyone knows we're moving into a period where really great work will get cut, so that is the main challenge and worry. It's how to get everybody excited about this alternative to traditional care. Fortunately, there's a good business case: this is cheaper than alternatives, as well as having better outcomes."
Fox is stepping up to his first chief executive role, having come from eight years at the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, where he was the director of policy and communications. He says the new job has so far been fun, with moments of fear.
"The difference betwen this job and my last is that I have to be concerned about absolutely everything. There's no luxury of having any blind spots," notes Fox.
"We have a fantastic network and because the central organisation is very small and doesn't have any resources, there are committedd people in the network who are doing things like organising conferences and doing some of the work that I've been more used to the central organistion having to do. So that's great and I don't want to lose that.
"The other thing that's interesting about the role is that my predecessor split the organisation in two and has moved sideways to head up a new social enterprise called Community Catalyst, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of NAAPS.
So it's quite unusual to be working alongside the previous chief executive and it could be an interesting challenge - but I wouldn't have taken the job on if I hadn't known Sian well and had a lot of confidence that this would work."
Fox says his leadership style is all about giving his colleagues enough space. "I think a lot of it is about the people that you're able to work with and how you are able to add value to what they're doing, rather than all about what you are able to do yourself," he reflects.
"I think networks like NAAPS are certainly looking for a voice and a sense of somebody that will be able to be a prominent person in the sector, but equally in my experience networks hate being told what to do. So it is much more about collaboration, particularly coming into a specialist field where everybody in the network knows more about it than I do. It is about having the self-confidence to be willing to listen to people and to take advice."
From Bubb's Blog
From Whitehall Watch
