People Involved: Craig Dearden-Phillips

Partners: Speaking Up

URLs related to this project: www.speakingup.org/

Where is the need for this project?

As greater numbers of people are offered personal budgets, enabling them to choose services for themselves, the demand for high-quality brokerage services is likely to grow. However, these services can be expensive.

Where do you hope this project can go?

To tackle this problem, and to ensure that service users have access to good brokerage support, Speaking Up is developing an approach that is both effective and cost-effective. Speaking Up is harnessing the power of co-production and peer-support to provide a sustainable brokerage service to personal budget holders. They are combining rigorous training of volunteers and peers, accessible information and experienced professionals to help people to make the most of their own support networks in assessing and choosing services for themselves. Speaking Up believes that this approach will help to take to scale and a vital element in the transformation of social care.