Welcome to LivesthroughFriends
The Cost of Monetized Social Care - Debated at Oxford Jam 2013
At today\\\\\\\'s Oxford Jam session Bob challenged Social Entrepreneurs to reflect on the philosophical and ethical challenges for social businesses operating in a needs and deficit focused milieu. Questions and dilemmas posed included...
Challenging folk to DARE TO WANT A LIFE!
Recently Bob was asked to contribute a Keynote and Workshops to PEP\\\'s (Hampshire Personalisation Expert Panel) \\\"Breathing New Life into Personalisation \\\" Event in Winchester. Afterwards the organisers asked him to reflect on the outcomes of his sessions. Here are his initial thoughts...
Much More to Life than Services will shortly be available in ebook format - watch this space!
New and DIFFERENT Book imminent
\"The Green Book - Caring for Each Other Sustainably\" will soon be rolling off the presses. It will also be available as an ebook.
Written by Bob Rhodes, with emotive contributions from Colin Campbell and Ken Davies, it explores the crisis in care in the UK through the media of stories, questions, opinions, poems, rhymes and songs. It strives to get beyond reason - to make you laugh and cry. Describing the book, Richard Davis writes: \"We are at many crossroads, we need above all to change the way we think. As Ackoff said, we won’t make progress by doing the wrong things righter. This book is a challenge to current thinking but neither is it a prescription for the warm and woolly. The consequences would be a better society and a cheaper one. Do you want to be strong and different or weak and similar?\"
Inspiring Day with Hants Personalisation Expert Panel
On April 20th Bob travelled to Winchester to share the day with 70 disabled people and family members who are day by day experts in the rigours of social care services. The organiser, Esi Hardy, wrote the next day to say, \\\"The feedback that we have had from your workshop and presentation is very positive and will definitely help to shape the way to work with service users in the future.\\\"
During the day Bob had run workshops enabling folk to tell themselves about the potential richness of their relationships and associations in comparison with the limitations imposed by needs-focused services.
Have you read "Much More to Life than Services"?
by Bob Rhodes, LivesthroughFriends Co-Director, "Much More to Life than Services" was published in 2010:
Much More to Life than Services...asks our social care professionals to use their skills, resources and knowledge to help people to come together and "visualise, plan and implement their own support". The book is a means to an end, a brilliant and sharp reminder to bring about a culture change for the better.
Martin Simon (Chief Executive - Time Banking UK).You can purchase a copy of "Much More To Life Than Services" through PayPal using the "BUY NOW" button below or click the following link to download an order form.
Click here to download an order form (Word Format)
Our goals are simple but challenging:
- To contribute to the evolution of the personalisation thrust and the restoring of power in respect of social welfare to individuals, families and communities
- To demonstrate the necessity and viability of a wide diversity of initiatives to not only support people to successfully self-direct but also, and as importantly, to effect a culture change in favour of self-reliance and reciprocity
- Through local action
- To raise grassroots awareness of the opportunities on offer and support people and organisations to grasp them
- To constructively criticise initiatives that unnecessarily retain power and control in the hands of public bureaucracies
- To contribute to the emergence of a movement of people who believe that there‘s more to life than services.