Podcast
At Play In The Garden of Eden
Hosted by Joe Tibbetts · EN
Two men, one an American Ai engineer and game designer living in Seattle and an English documentary film maker living in Dover, England in conversation about AI, documentaries, chess, human stupidity and the future of the human race.
83episodes
Episodes
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Making the most of the tech opportunity in social care
Nov 28, 201800:41:03Tap to summarizeKirklees Council were prompted to develop an online self-assessment process for financial support requests when increasing demand following the Care Act left their existing 100-days-to-process service unable to cope. 80% of requests are now completed online (including by the very elderly), 18% by phone - using the same process, but mediated - and only 2% now require a home visit. Time and money saved all round is significant, and developers Looking Local (co-owned by Kirklees Council) are supporting a new collaboration by Kent, Stockton and Nottinghamshire Councils to take forward an online care needs assessment project. The project has been submitted for funding from the new Local Digital Fund. EveryLife Technologies' Pass System is a digital tool and platform that replaces the paperwork involved in managing people's care and medication whether they are in residential care home or receiving homecare. Lianne and Taffy discuss the processes involved in bringing about these innovations, how collaboration – council to council or council with providers - works, the constraints of traditional procurement methods, and the need to engage care workers in both design and implementation of new technologies. Key technologies in the pipeline include sensors for prediction and picking up unknown issues, and voice recognition, which could dramatically cut the time and cost of recording information about care visits, and as well as enabling the cared-for to provide feedback.
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An Audience With CLGdotTV No3 - What now for social care? Will the Green Paper ever arrive?
Nov 15, 201800:34:01Tap to summarizeFormer Care Minister Paul Burstow and Joel Charles of Future Care Capital set out their hopes for the much anticipated social care green paper but the discussion suggests that these may be running ahead of expectations…. The Green Paper will present an opportunity for what has become, through long delay, a desperately needed settlement for social care. The vision needs to be long term and the system sustainable beyond the natural life span of the government that delivers it. Accountability needs to be sharpened at local level and there needs to be better alignment between the different players – in health as well as social care. People need to be made aware that individuals, by and large, have to pay for social care, and the public needs to be prepared for proposals – like the ill-fated dementia tax – that attempt to fund the system properly and also make it fairer for 'self-funders'. Above all, there needs to be a re-think about data collection and use. The existing data that are collected, mostly for monitoring purposes, are unhelpful when it comes to thinking about doing things differently, and there needs to be much more local, granular data available to reflect the more complex needs of changing and ageing populations. This content is brought to you free of charge through the generous support of CLGdotTV
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Thinking differently about residential care: what does the data say?
Nov 15, 201800:24:03Tap to summarizeThe fragility of care home provision in some localities is a consequence of property values, workforce costs and downward pressure on fees for council-funded residents. Analysis of the data about available beds, people flows, costs and fees provides the evidence base for future planning. According to Dan and Chris, the sector needs to think differently about the role of residential care, moving away from the traditional idea of it as a final, permanent destination and towards something more flexible, in which people may have episodes of residential care in between longer spells of independent or semi-independent living. For others, including elderly people and those with learning disabilities, it may involve them not experiencing residential care at all. Involvement with NHS organisations in developing such thinking, via CCGs and through the sustainability and transformation planning process will be key, they say, since individuals who need residential care will almost always be NHS patients as well as care service users.
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Social care: benefits of 'extra care' approaches and why demand outstrips supply
Nov 15, 201800:23:39Tap to summarize'Extra Care' housing developments provide mixed tenure accommodation and options for residents to receive levels of social care from nothing at all to something almost equivalent to residential care. Research - discussed in this conversation - shows that people who live in extra care accommodation consume many fewer NHS and social care resources because they tend to require medical treatment (including hospital stays) less frequently and if they do, recover more quickly. However, there is a shortage of such accommodation because levels of housing benefit and social care support for the less well off make such developments difficult to finance. As is explained in the video, the situation would be different if 'the system' were able to factor into the equation known savings to NHS and social care budgets.
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Pitching for government business becoming affordable for SMEs thanks to CCS, GDS, MHCLG collaboration
Nov 15, 201800:21:08Tap to summarizeThe days when an SME would have to sacrifice up to 65 (non-earning) hours to pitch for a government contract are, if not over, then at least coming to an end, insists Emilia Cedeno, who is running the Digital Outcomes and Specialists (DOS) framework for government procurement agency the Crown Commercial Service. In this video she describes the measures CCS is taking as it works towards a target of getting 33% of government business awarded to SMEs. Among these are a much shorter, more simple, public sector contract, written in plain English; work with government (including local government) buyers to improve briefs and to be clearer about budgets; and encouragement of 'pre-tender engagement' to open up contracts to not-just-the-usual-suspects. Poss Apostolou, who has recently joined the private sector from GDS, describes the involvement of GDS in the moves to make procurement more SME-friendly and also the impact of MHCLG's 'Local Digital Declaration' which councils must sign up to in order to pitch for funding for local digital projects. Workshops with local authorities, which among other things will promote the procurement of digital components as a means of breaking up traditional, all-encompassing council service contracts, are being rolled out as part of the campaign.
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Unpaid carers: sorely undervalued in spite of being worth 'a second NHS'
Nov 14, 201800:30:47Tap to summarizeThere are 6.5 million of them, looking after friends, family or neighbours who through illness, disability or old age need care that is not being provided by the NHS or formal care services. The value of this contribution is £132bn to the UK economy and can be equated to having a 'second NHS'. But that contribution, and indeed social care generally, is not sufficiently valued by those in power, to support it with proper funding. The situation has arisen partly because of the UK's artificial divide between health and social care, with the 'heroes' of the NHS always coming first in the queue for money. But it is not just about money: our siloed system also prevents the sort of integration in care provision that we can find in places like the Netherlands and Estonia. This discussion, including audience contributions, refers to a number of positive developments including a programme on the sustainability of care being led by the University of Sheffield, the potential of technology, and the idea for a Royal College for care workers.
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Interesting Times no3. Vicky Sargent and Dylan Roberts: the collaborative, digital, approach to health and wellbeing in Leeds
Oct 10, 201800:11:16Tap to summarizeAs such he is Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for the Digital Health and Wellbeing Programme for the whole of Leeds, SRO for the 100% Digital Smart Cities Programme as well as providing overall leadership for Leeds City Council's change programmes. Additionally he is accountable for Digital and Information strategy, governance, innovation, policy and assurance for LCC and NHS CCGs. In this podcast, the first of a series, Dylan describes how this wide-ranging role, that includes responsibility for NHS and local authority IT/digital programmes, came about. In future podcasts we will look at how willingness to focus on user needs, and collaborate and share across organisational and professional boundaries, is a key element of Leeds' place-based approach to building a successful and inclusive future city.
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WARNING SOME PEOPLE MAY FIND THIS CONTENT UPSETTING An estimated 4,000 teenagers in London alone are involved in county lines drug dealing.
Oct 7, 201800:26:41Tap to summarizeCounty lines is a term coined to describe the criminal exploitation, by organised crime gangs, of children in the sale and distribution of drugs. Often these children are made to travel across counties to supply the drugs and use dedicated mobile phone 'lines' to organise the "business". As The Children's Society explains the crime gangs deliberately target vulnerable children – those who are homeless living in care homes or trapped in poverty. These children are unsafe, unloved, or unable to cope, and the gangs take advantage of this. The gangs groom, threaten or trick children into trafficking their drugs for them. They might threaten a young person physically, or they might threaten the young person's family members. The gangs might also offer something in return for the young person's cooperation – it could be money, food, alcohol, clothes and jewellery, or improved status – but the giving of these gifts will usually be manipulated so that the child feels they are in debt to their exploiter. However they become trapped in county lines, the young people involved feel as if they have no choice but to continue doing what the gangs want and tragically the authorities often see and treat them as criminals rather than abused and exploited children which is what they are.
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There is much, understandable anxiety in Local Authority Land around the near collapse of our social care systems
Oct 2, 201800:02:01Tap to summarizeThe sector's champions have pointed out that unless the (poorly understood) social care system is properly funded the (much worshiped) NHS will continue to struggle to meet demand. Focusing on the threat to the NHS might just prise out more funds for Social Care. But many of our best thinkers and practitioners are already looking (and acting) way beyond the short term solution of propping up our disjointed, dysfunctional, not fit for purposed-for-our-current-demographic, system. An Audience With CLGdotTV No.3 on the future of Social Care (Central London - 23rd October will bring some of these radical thinkers and leaders together to make six CLGdotTV programmes with added value from a live, lively and informed studio audience. Integrating health & social care: news from Leeds Essex County Council: interventions to accelerate hospital discharge Supporting our fragile care provider market Outcomes based commissioning: a truly user-focused approach The Government Green Paper The digital opportunity: doing different things, not the same things differently The programmes available simultaneously as dotTV programmes and as podcasts and including the contributions from our expert studio audience will be available on CLGdotTV from 24th October onwards. Contact Ben Webber b.webber@boilerhouse.co.uk for more information.
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Steve Johnson Regional Director, Northern Europe at Ruckus Networks. in conversation with Joe Tibbetts
Sep 27, 201800:27:11Tap to summarizeRuckus is a provider of telecommunication products and services offering video processing, broadband delivery, access networking, and video devices. They serve cable, telecom, satellite, broadcasters, and other industries in the public and private sectors across Europe. The conversation is about the Internet of Things (IoT) and smart places and specifically how all the much anticipated social, economic and political benefits from the smart life - that we are now coming to demand as an inalienable right - rely upon a full-on, full-time ubiquitous connection or they fail. And while this will require a patchwork of Wi-Fi and 5G and even some radio bandwidth at a local level we users will pass from one cover to another without noticing the joins or ever being without our connection. A few years ago it was impossible to imagine a world with such ubiquitous connectivity and the benefits it would bring. Now it is difficult to imagine life without it.
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