Citizen Advisors - Turning Point

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Turning Point Connected Care Report 4 Executive Summary Empowering communities to do more for themselves and encouraging individuals within a local area to come together and have a role in shaping and delivering services are key components of the coalition government’s vision for a Big Society, and in reframing the purpose of public services, particularly in health and social care, with communities acting as more active participants in creating better outcomes. This co-production approach can build capacity, develop the skills of local people and result in a more appropriate use of services. However, involving people in the design of services may not be enough to truly build community resilience and improve quality of life. Individuals will need support to help them to interact and engage with services and to build their confidence so that they are able to play an active role in their communities. Turning Point Connected Care argues that a new approach to service provision, Citizen Advisors, is best placed to provide this service and offer this type of support for communities within a more integrated health system. The purpose of a Citizen Advisor is to assist people in accessing the variety of services that they require to meet their needs. Citizen Advisors would signpost people into programmes in their local area and then support people through the process of engaging with services. This Turning Point report reviews a number of approaches to service navigation and wider support, placing particular attention on those that join up health and social care. This is important because integrating health and social care support improves efficiency, the service user experience, and can produce savings. For example, integrated health and social care initiatives can realise savings of between £1.20 and £2.65 for every £1 spent (Turning Point, 2010). The report finds that it is essential that citizen advisor type models are designed and delivered in response to the needs and wishes of the local community. This criterion is reflected in the fact that there are often differences between citizen advisor services that have been set up in different communities, particularly urban and rural areas. Citizen advisors in urban areas tend to focus on directing people to statutory services, whereas citizen advisors in rural areas play a much bigger role in community development and tackling social isolation. However, in many cases individuals require both forms of support and there is evidence to show that there can be practical difficulties when attempting to deliver this. Often citizen advisors feel unable to fulfil both aspects of the role, signposting to services and improving community capacity, and they prefer to focus on one aspect or another, depending on their background and experience. This is influenced to a large extent by whether the citizen advisor is a qualified professional, or a local community member. It seems that this can have a large impact on the credibility of the service, both with clients and with other professionals. Local people working as citizen advisors tend to have a much
Turning Point Connected Care Report 5 better understanding of the local community and issues, and are able to build trust and confidence amongst the community. Whereas, those with a professional background, tend not only to get paid more, but have stronger mechanisms for working with other professionals whose understanding and knowledge of the citizen advisor service is critical to the success of the initiative. In order to overcome some of these difficulties, Turning Point recommends the establishment and rolling out of Citizen Advisor services across the country that build on elements of existing successful initiatives explored in this paper. Citizen Advisors will be a new approach to service delivery that is not ‘service’ focused but ‘people’ focused. Our vision is for Citizen Advisors that are recruited from their local communities, setting themselves up in community owned social enterprises based in the heart of local communities. They will operate at the interface between primary care and the community, with a remit to provide a joined up approach to multiple challenges, and to remove layers of bureaucracy not add to it. To fulfil this ambition, we recommend that Citizen Advisors have the following characteristics: 1. Citizen Advisors should have first hand knowledge of the local community and/or be experts by experience, not professionally led. A quasi-professional Citizen Advisor role would entail recruiting local people who are experts by experience. This makes training and shadowing statutory services and local organisations of paramount importance and would result in the role being complementary to, but independent of statutory services. 2. Their remit should be designed and developed by local communities to help meet the specific needs locally. Community engagement is a necessary prerequisite for Citizen Advisors to help build up their resilience and empowerment locally. Citizen Advisor services could be set up as community owned social enterprises, thus allowing local people to have control over service provision and build their own skills. 3. Citizen Advisors should focus on supporting individuals who are in greatest need of support and/or have not traditionally used local services. Citizen Advisors should focus upon helping disengaged and marginalised individuals to access services and to use services more appropriately. However, the service should be inclusive and therefore also available more widely for people with lower level needs. 4. The role of Citizen Advisors should not be limited to signposting to existing services but encompass wider support across early intervention, self care and building community capacity.
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Citizen Advisors - Turning Point

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