'Let's keep the conversation going on adult social care in Lancashire': open invite to Preston event

Lancashire residents are being invited to help shape the future of adult social care in the county at a special event in Preston on Wednesday (28th October).

Dubbed ‘Lancashire Listens: The Big Conversation on Care’, it will offer individuals the chance to relay their own experience of the social care system in an attempt to improve the service they and others receive in future.

However, it is also an opportunity for them to find out more about the support they could currently be missing out on - including help staying independent, assistance for unpaid carers, access to community facilities, the use of technology and the availability of care-related information and services.

The free event takes place at Crossgate Church, on St. Mary’s Street North - opposite Preston Prison - between 10am and 3pm. It is open to all, whether they receive or provide care - formally or informally - are employed in the care sector or just want to have their say.

Lancashire County Council - which is responsible for adult social care in all parts of Lancashire except Blackpool and Blackburn with Darwen - is staging the drop-in session and says the feedback it receives will help inform the authority’s response to the national commission on adult social care, which is being led by Baroness Louise Casey.

Cabinet member for adult social care Tom Pickup told the Lancashire Post that attendees could expect “a friendly, two-way conversation where people can come in [and] meet our teams”.

“There will be lots of stands there - it's not a traditional conference, where you turn up and listen to someone speak until you're half asleep,” County Cllr Pickup promised.

Earlier this month, the county council published the strategy that will underpin its own new ‘model of care’. That was drawn up after a public consultation undertaken late last year, to which there were more 1,600 responses. Seven hundred people were also involved in active, so-called "co-production" of the strategic vision.

County Cllr Pickup said it would nevertheless still be a worthwhile for anybody who had previously contributed to the model of care consultation to attend the Preston event - and added that that fact was emblematic of how the authority would be seeking to engage with residents on the issue of care from now on.

“I think a key part of the new way of working and the models of care is keeping those conversations going. So it's not just a one-time thing - and then those relationships end and we'll just go off and work in our silos.

“We want to have that continuous feedback about what we're doing when we're introducing new things and get as many people's input as possible into the wide range of issues that fall under adult social care and peripheral areas, like public health, which tie into it as well,” he added.