A beautiful tribute to Nicola Kirk, written by Jo Fitzgerald at People Hub and published in the Guardian. My friend Nicola Kirk (nee Darby), who has died aged 41 of cancer, may not have been a politician or a medical professional, but she was nevertheless a true pioneer in public services.     When her husband, Stephen, had an accident in 2008 that left him completely paralysed from the neck down, life was turned upside

We welcome the launch of the Coalition for Collaborative Care which brings together some of the most influential bodies in health and social care to champion the transformation of support provided for people with long-term health conditions.   More than 15 million people in the UK are living with a long-term condition. They are the biggest users of NHS services but they are spending a large amount of their own time managing their care and

We would like to congratulate Miro Griffiths, one of our associates, on receiving his MBE last week.     Miro received his MBE for services to people with disabilities.   Commenting on the award, Miro said: “It is a great honour to receive the MBE and I am stunned by the whole experience. I have tried to promote the views of disabled people and help bring about positive change for our society. I feel the

This guest blog post is from Richard Lamplough from A Potential Diamond, one of our newest Stay Connected members.     I sat in on an Apprenticeship interview at the beginning of the week supporting a young man with Asperger’s Syndrome; let’s call him Andy.   The employer and, in this case, the Apprenticeship provider, was a large FE College in the South East of England. Andrew had the suitable qualifications for the post (working in office administration)

Thirty one third, community and voluntary sector organisations have been working with NHS Engand and In Control as part of a national development programme on personal health budgets.   The programme’s aim has been to help equip them with the knowledge and expertise to inform their local communities about personal health budgets.   Participating organisations have also been helping to support eligible people to discuss the option of a personal health budget with their local

A young man from Scotland being allocated an individual budget that enabled him to buy an accordion and lessons, which subsequently led to him being offered a place at the Glasgow School of Music, is just one of the team’s highlights from 2014.   When we asked the In Control team to reflect a little on the past 12 months and what their highlights were, we weren’t short of responses, here’s just a brief selection

There are now 149 adult and children’s services as well as clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), (CCGs) signed up to measure the impact personal budgets and education, health and care plans are having on people’s lives.   They will be using POET, the Personal Outcomes Evaluation Tool, which has been developed over a number of years with Lancaster University. POET was originally developed for adult social care but it has recently been adapted so that children’s

In Control publishes a report with Lancaster University using the Personal Outcome Evaluation Tool (POET) to measure the impact of education, health and care plans for children and young people with special education needs and disabilities. The report features the results of surveys completed from across 18 different local authority children’s services who participated in the designing and testing of the tool, surveys were completed by 355 parents/carers and 36 young people who have experience