Innovation Exchange

“Transforming social care is a complex challenge and no one person or organisation has all the answers. Addressing it requires innovative thinking and action to help us build excellent joined-up services. We need to work together with passion and commitment to help everyone lead fulfilling, independent lives.”
Mick Connell, Chair of the East Midlands Joint Improvement Partnership and Director of Adult Social Care and Health at Leicestershire County Council

Personalisation depends upon our ability to innovate in social care. Innovation in social care can take a number of forms:

• New tools and technologies (e.g. telecare and web technology)
• New approaches to organising and providing care (e.g. user-led approaches and personal budgets)
• New models of service and support (for example, cognitive behaviour therapy and service brokerage for personal budget holders)

Across the East Midlands, people in the public and third sectors are already using their passion and ingenuity to deliver personalisation. But no one person has all the answers, we can always do better.

Innovation Exchange is working with the East Midlands Joint Improvement Partnership to seek out and support some of the innovation projects that can help to drive further progress within this region. We are staging a Festival of Ideas on Wednesday 17th March, drawing together commissioners, investors and supporters around the best innovations in this field. You can view highlights from our last Festival of Ideas here. This event will look at all types of innovations, showcasing high-potential third sector innovations that seek to achieve at least one of the following objectives:

• Support people to live independently in their own homes, rather than in residential care
• Support people with learning disabilities and mental ill-health into employment
• Support personal budget holders, for example, through advice, guidance, brokerage and advocacy
• Improve quality of life for carers or people with dementia or with long-term conditions

If you are an innovator in the third sector and would like to attend this event to promote and develop your work and to connect with commissioners and investors in this field, please respond to our Call for Ideas.

If you are a commissioner of services in the public sector or work for a trust, foundation or another organisation looking to collaborate with innovators in this space please email us to book a place at this event.