In the social care world, there’s a movement towards encouraging and empowering people and communities to care for themselves and each other. Personal care budgets – that allow service users to choose and pay for the services that best suit their needs – is one element of that. What is often found, though, is that local and community-based initiatives can be far better at “looking after their own” than the ‘block services’ that local authorities and health services deliver.
These locally-delivered services often access previously untapped skills, knowledge and experience from the community, resulting in services being delivered by enthusiastic, community-minded people. This sense of inclusion in their community can dramatically improve service user’s quality of life, health and wellbeing, and independence.
A community of people who interact, trust and look after each other has what is known as “social capital” – and this is more and more being seen as a hugely valuable resource in the delivery of social care.
Mindings, at its core is all about nurturing social connection:
We help grandmothers see daily pictures of their grandchildren who live so far away and rarely visit.
We help sons and daughters set up daily schedules and reminders to help their parents live independently.
We help granddads be included in the social media loop, without having to learn how to use a computer.
And, we’re working on a new concept “Virtual Befriending” in which we can gather a varied group of befrienders and help them share pictures and messages with people who have no family, friends or community – using Mindings as a digital social hub.
On the Disruptive Social Care Podcast I present with social care advocate Shirley Ayres, our guest Dominic Campbell, founder of FutureGov, discusses austerity-led innovation, social capital and why he looks towards innovations like Mindings for interesting takes on social capital.
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