Date published: September 2, 2021
The Shared Lives Plus guidance – new and improved
We’re proud that Shared Lives is consistently rated as the highest quality and safest form of social care. Our guidance is the body of nearly 200 documents designed to help maintain that standard and guide you through every step of running a successful Shared Lives scheme. To keep pace with developments in legislation, regulations and the evolving, rights-base ethos of shared living, we have been working on updating every document as part of our new membership offer to you. Today, we unpublished the former collection of guidance that you are used to seeing, and launched the new suite.
To make sure the guidance stays fit for purpose to maintain the high standard of Shared Lives care, we’ve worked on it with several key principles in mind.
Firstly, we have made changes to incorporate several pieces of new or changing legislation in areas which impact the structures and processes of running a Shared Lives scheme. Secondly, we have changed the way in which the guidance is written, not only to make it clearer and more accessible, but also ensure that the rights and wellbeing of people who use Shared Lives are at the heart of all of our best practice. We have also changed the look and feel of all the documents to bring them in line with the new Shared Lives Plus branding. Finally, we have changed the structure, sections and content of the whole suite of guidance to try to make it more intuitive and easier to navigate.
You access the new guidance in exactly same way as the old, through your membership area of the website. Our New guidance index can help you find exactly what you’re looking for. You’ll see that a couple of documents are missing – in most cases we’re still working on these with specialists, and in some cases they are pending new legislation, please bear with us!
The last two years have shown us how quickly things can move on the policy landscape, and with more new and updated legislation on the horizon, we will be regularly reviewing and updating the guidance on a rolling basis, so please keep checking in to make sure your processes and procedures are up-to-date.
We are preparing a comparative document which will clarify where pieces from the old suite of guidance have been amalgamated into new documents, or have new titles. This will be ready in time for our next scheme webinar on Thursday October 7, which will be dedicated to explaining the new guidance, describing any important changes and how to incorporate the new material into your practice. Tune in then to learn more!
