Joe Crammond and Jamie Potts, share their thoughts on why people with lived experience should be at the heart of social care planning, and how, in their roles as Quality Advisors at Community Integrated Care, they are involved in designing and developing services.
Jamie Potts and Joe Crammond have been employed as Quality Advisors for national social care charity, Community Integrated Care, since 2015. Both use their first-hand experiences of accessing care and support to inform meaningful developments across 450 UK services, as well as empowering people supported by the charity to do the same. Championing people’s unique needs and perspectives is a fundamental part of the organisation’s Best Lives Possible vision.
Jamie and Joe are firm advocates in the importance of fostering a culture of co-production across the sector and beyond, reflecting on the opportunities they have gained to influence change with national policymakers and through the charity’s own Voice Groups platform.
Jamie shared the significance of his role in representing for people with care and support needs and making sure everyone is involved in service design, delivery, and development:
“There are five Quality Advisors at Community Integrated Care, and we all get the chance to make a big difference to peoples’ lives. It’s our job to make sure people we support feel valued and connected. There is a Quality Advisor for every region we work and people we support can talk to us about anything that is affecting them. We share back ideas with the quality and leadership team to act on.
I love my job, mostly because I get a chance to meet lots of interesting people but also because I have a lot of responsibility. When the charity has a big idea, they come to us to talk about it first. That’s important because we understand exactly what it’s like to be supported by a service. We can represent for people like us.
Quality Advisors have so much influence – we even interviewed our Chief Executive, Jim Kane! I don’t think our charity would be the same without us, we give the view of the most important people and we’re involved from the start. This makes a big difference to how things are set-up and makes services more person-centred.”
Joe added his thoughts on how Community Integrated Care are championing inclusion through their Voice Groups meetings and how himself and others have been given opportunities to lead on change across the sector and nationally:
“Quality Advisors host Voice Groups for people supported by Community Integrated Care, across the UK. These give people the chance to feedback about their care and support and we use these insights to improve our services. People we support are the reason we exist; they are the experts, so they should be the real leaders. Voice Groups help people change things for the better and support people to become more confident and independent.
We also get the chance to work with other organisations and influence the government. Sushma (one of our Quality Advisors) went to a roundtable at Parliament in September and talked about social care challenges. I meet often with ARC to discuss how we can improve social care and society for everyone. We get together online and talk about things like voting and elections, making public transport better and safe relationships. ARC take all these ideas to the people who make decisions about social care. This makes me proud.
People supported by the charity are given the power to recognise their rights and make a mark too. Our Promoting our Voting campaign helps people understand they have a right to vote. One of the people we support, Tauseef, spoke at a Future Social Care Coalition event in Parliament last December. It’s so important that people with care and support needs are given this voice – in social care and across society.”
@CommIntCare
