Sam Sly describes how radical social work can be inspired by personalisation and work with people with complex needs and challenging behaviour

2. About me
• A social worker and proud of it!
• A activist not a theorist
• Trained in Plymouth and then went to work in social
services, health, regulation and campus closures
• Constantly felt things should be better for people
• Started consultancy to model how things could be
more personalised
• Enough is Enough – Time for Change!
• People agreed but saw no change
• Decided best to do it myself!

3. What got me started
Key theories:
• Social Role Valorization – Dr. Wolf
Wolfensberger (1983)
• Social Model of Disability – Mike Oliver (1983)
• Keys to Citizenship – Dr. Simon Duffy (2006)
Meeting some inspiring people
And the people I met – families and people with
learning disabilities

4. About Beyond Limits
• 3 year project with NEW Devon CCG Personalising
Commissioning
• Using Individual Service Funds
• Using Service Design & Working Policy
• 20 people currently in Hospital placements
• 20 people with big reputations
• 20 people who will get a tailor made service
• 20 people who will get a life that makes sense to
them

5. What does ‘Radical’ mean to me
• Never think of myself about being radical!
• Having a passion for what I do
• Can do attitude – ‘never give up!’
• Thinking ‘out of the box’
• Not accepting systems that hold people back
• Never losing sight of the person and bringing
power back to the person

6. Real Wealth
The resources that keep people resilient
and fighting for a good life
 Strengths – skills, gifts and abilities
 Connections (relationships) –
family, friends, community networks and organisations
 Community (Access) – information, emotional and
physical support
 Control (Assets) – income, property, savings, benefits
Pippa Murray, Simon Duffy, Nic Crosby (2008)

7. The World We Work Within
• Health (medical model still persists) –
patients, medicine and programmes
• ‘Winterbourne’ is not a one off
• Power imbalance to professionals
• Families excluded
• People seen as the problem
• People and community torn apart

8. Jim Mansell 2007
 Individualised, local solutions providing good quality of life not
those too large to provide individualised support, too far from
their homes, and providing good quality of life in the home and as
part of the local community.
 Direct payments and individual budgets should always be
considered and be more widely available.
 Closer co-ordination between the commissioners paying for
services, the managers providing services and the professional
specialist advising on the support people need to ensure advice is
both practicable and acted on.
 Commissioners should allocate a budget to be used to fund a
much wider variety of interventions as an alternative to
placement in a special unit.
Jim Mansell ‘Services for people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour or
mental health needs’ 2007

9. So where do we start?
Service Design
‘Every service is designed, from scratch, with
only the person in mind, and modified in the
light of experience and as things change.
Individual service design in rooted in the
organisation’s commitment to help everyone
achieve citizenship for themselves’.

10. You can’t plan without a Budget!
 Planning and pre-move
transition is funded (one
off payment clawed
back through reductions
from years 2 onward)
 Post move transition is
funded
 On-going budget flexible
in first year
 Greatest reductions
after year two and three

11. The ‘how to’ bit!
• Many great plans are made and fall down
because they are not followed up by a
detailed ‘how to’ bit.
• It is fundamentally important that once a
service is designed a ‘how to’ plan is written.
Partners for Inclusion and Beyond Limits call
this a Working Policy.
• Involves the person (if they wish), present and
past professionals and family

12. If you always do what you always
did
You will always get what you
always got
Think Radical!

13. Exercise

14. Contacts
Sam Sly
Beyond Limits
sam@beyondlimits-uk.org
sam.sly@enoughisenough.
org.uk
07900 424144
www.beyondlimits-uk.org