Podcast Episode: Trend Spotter network
Category: Disability
Speaker(s):
Host(s):
What follows is a transcription of the audio recording. Due to differences between spoken and written English, the transcript may contain quirks of grammar and syntax.
MM - Michael McEwan
SC - Susan Campbell
MM Today we are joined by Susan Campbell, from the Social Care Ideas Factory. First of all before Susan tells us about the project, she is going to tell us a bit about herself.
SC Hi Michael, yes, my name is Susan Campbell and I am a self employed life coach and community worker, but I have been doing bits and pieces of work for the Social Care Ideas Factory on an off for the last 5 years now and this piece of work I am working on just now is called ‘Trendspotters’, and it’s a really exciting piece of work that I am wanting to tell Michael all about today.
MM Okay, so basically what is ‘Trendspotters’?
SC ‘Trendspotters’ is an exciting new community that we have pooled together within Social Care Ideas Factory and the idea of it is to involve people who use services, staff, carers, commissioners of services and services themselves, to pool together ideas and trends that they think are really important for people in having a good life. So it’s a Scotland wide project and it’s really about looking at what things are important to people right across life areas, so it could be anything to do with training, work, employment, relationships, it could be to do with hobbies and sports, really, really … very much be determined by the groups themselves that … you know what are the things that they feel make a good life and the point of the project is that when we get all this feedback, that will be used to shape future services.
MM So, where does your funding come from, just tell us a bit more about that?
SC Sure, the funding comes from the Scottish Government and it is a 2 year project, we are 6 months into it now, just over 6 months into it, but it’s a 2 year project and it’s going to be very much about pooling together ideas, views, opinions, and as I said, the whole point of it is to feed that feedback that we get from people, back to Scottish Government and help improve and shape the services for the future within health and social care.
MM So, what age do you have to be to join this project?
SC Well it’s really very broad, it’s open to anyone who is using services, I mean we are working with young people in transition, right the way up through to people who are using older people services, so it’s right across the board age wise, there’s no restriction in terms of that.
MM So, tell us what kind of subjects that you would be talking about at the meetings when you meet up with different people?
SC Well we had a really successful launch of ‘Trendspotters’ in November and lots of different people came along from services, individuals and staff, and we were promoting ‘Trendspotters’, we have got a DVD as well, a short DVD that we launched at the event as well and again, I suppose it’s very much about what people bring to us. We have given some examples of possible subjects that we would be offering people to discuss, such as relationships, friendships, work and employment, you know all the kind of things that are important to people. And the way that it work will, I suppose we will set up kind of focus groups across Scotland so that we can get people together and we will have particular themes for each of the groups and these themes will form the agenda for each of the get togethers and it will be very informal, it will be about sharing your views, meeting other people, I mean that’s why we have called it a community, Michael, because we feel it’s very important that the kind of social aspect of it is promoted as well, this is about people sharing their views but also getting a chance to meet other people who have similar views and coming together and helping to improve the services of the future. We will also be looking at how we can use social media within this, because obviously we recognise that it is a Scotland wide project and we want to set up Facebook forums, have different consultation exercises happening through social media, and using Skype and online forums, all kinds of things that we can do to try and involve as many people as possible.
MM So, if people listening to this are thinking, ‘wow, I want to join’, how can they go about it, have you got an email address or a Facebook page that you can give us?
SC We certainly have, we have a Facebook page, which is SCIF Trendspotters, and our email address is sciftrendspotters@gmail.com, and if people are interested in finding out more, then they can sign up and like the Facebook page and they will get all the updates that way, or they can email me at the email address. We are starting off initially wanting to pool together the views of people who use services but we will then be moving onto other groups as well, such as parent carers and staff in services, commissioners, it’s going to be a very broad range of people that we are seeking the views from, but initially we are working with people who use services. So if anybody is interested in getting involved in ‘Trendspotters’, just get in touch with me and we will let you know when the meetings are happening and when you can come along.
MM Okay, thanks for your time, Susan, and good luck with your project.
SC Thanks very much, Michael.
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