Most read posts this week 25th October 2013
Here’s the most read frontline and independent blogs this week based on their combined views on Guerilla Policy and Guerilla Feed – from the Work Programme to mobility support, mental health to Help to Buy.
Frontline Friday 11th October: Our favourite frontline blogs this week
Here’s our list of ten frontline blogs we’ve particularly liked from the week of 7th October 2013 – from education, welfare reform to mental health and social care.
SS Review
“Everyone has their vulnerabilities though. Mine (ok, one of mine) is Social Services. I wish I was exaggerating, but finding an email from them can turn me from utterly calm and in control into a shrieking mess. It’s irrational, but then we’ve not got a super history…” Lucy in bed describes her experience of Social Services care reviews.
Frontline Friday 27th September 2013: Our favourite frontline blogs this week
Here’s our list of ten frontline blogs we’ve particularly liked from the week of 23rd September 2013 – from local authority cuts, supporting families to the bedroom tax and Labour Party conference.
Service before self
“Above all I want the work that I do to matter and make a difference to people’s lives; only then will the internal critic of self-doubt and guilt quieten down for a while.” A guest blogger at We Love Local Government describes the very human impact of the cuts.
Capita, Serco, G4S, government and the rise and rise of electronic tagging
“It seems that Capita has positioned itself (with three other companies) to take over the dire electronic tagging system run by Serco and G4S for the Ministry of Justice. By “dire,” I mean “very likely fraudulent”…” Kate Belgrave is concerned about Capita’s expansion into the electronic tagging market.
Frontline Friday 5th July 2013: Our favourite frontline blogs this week
Here’s our list of ten frontline blogs we’ve particularly liked from the week of 1st July 2013. Let us know which posts we’ve missed and which other bloggers we should be following for next week’s list.
£3.8bn for health and social care? No thanks!
When I heard the announcement that the Government was creating a £3.8bn pot to fund social care my heart sank. Not because the funding isn’t needed. It clearly and quite desperately is. But this isn’t new money. It’s money that is currently in the “ring fenced, protected” NHS budget and used to provide services free […]
Ordinary residence, extraordinary mess
“Disabled people in residential care who want to live more independently are being prevented from doing so by funding wrangles between local authorities” – that’s taken from a piece I wrote three years ago, but since then little has changed. The original piece is on the Guardian website: “Caught in a trap: disabled people can’t move out […]
Do we still value people for who they are?
Recently, I’ve been wondering: what happened to our society’s fundamental moral belief that people have inherent value by virtue of being human? When did we start, consciously or sub-consciously, measuring people’s well-being in terms of cost? Is this the kind of society we really want, or is it the result of a political ideology for […]
Six months in… disability
It’s six months since we launched this version of Guerilla Policy. Here’s a selection of some of our favourite posts we’ve published in disability – from the personal impact of the Government’s reforms, to grassroots campaigns for the rights of disabled people.
The real impact of PIP on social care
I’ve just finished reading about how PIP (Personal Independence Payments) will impact on social care services and it was really shocking. Simon Duffy from the Centre for Welfare Reform writes: “The replacement of DLA with PIP will damage local communities by reducing the incomes of people in poverty, reducing charging income for social care and increasing the numbers entitled […]
Fighting for our independence
“The big question for me is, even in these difficult times, can the Coalition rise to this vital challenge, or will the life chances of disabled people be destroyed for a generation?” Jane Young argues for an alternative to the Government’s welfare reforms and the planned closure of the Independent Living Fund.
Choice - real or imagined
I have just read a really interesting blogpost by a GP I admire a great deal: Dr Martin Brunet. He tweets as @DocMartin68. I’m not sure who the other 67 Doc Martins are but I like this touch of humour and Martin’s ‘down to earth’ approach to many of the pithy issues that are facing the […]
Guerilla Policy: Our top bloggers
We were interested to see which frontline bloggers we’ve published most since we started the new site in November, so here they are - the top 14 bloggers on Guerilla Policy from across housing, social care, mental health, education, policing and probation services.
Urgent new threat to the NHS - 5 ways you can help
Right now, the government is trying to sneak through secondary legislation (under Section 75 of the Health & Social Care Act) to force virtually every part of the NHS to be opened up to *compulsory* competitive markets, open to the private sector. We have just over a month to stop them, and we need to […]
Are we human…?
“It is difficult, especially in these cash strapped times, for health services to be seen to spend their budgets on anything other than pure clinical care. We’ve all seen the headlines. Where they do, however, the results can be great.” Zoe Porter considers the emotional impact of personal health budgets, and why they represent what really matters in public services - compassion and connectedness.
Adoption: Threats and divisions as Gove loses patience
We’ve known for some time now that as far as working with children in care are concerned, adoption is the government’s absolute priority. A series of announcements over the past 15 months or so have focused on different aspects of the process. Last week came the latest and potentially most radical, where failing authorities could […]
The big question?
“I don’t think the government have a clue what constitutes success in social work so they came up with some half arsed timescales and a quick look around the basics of what we do and then tell us we are ‘outstanding’.” Social Worker X asks some fundamental questions about social work and doubts whether how we measure ‘success’ fits with the reality of protecting children.
Frontline Friday round-up 18th January 2013
Our round-up of frontline blogs we liked from the week of 14th January 2013, from welfare reforms to the probation service, child care cuts to politicians blaming civil servants - and the price of speaking up.