It was positive to hear Andrew Lansley state that - whilst reducing the deficit remains the Government’s foremost concern - social care is one of his five priorities at the Department of Health.  This statement has been backed up by the timetable set out for the next 18 months, with key points as follows:

July 2010: Establish Commission on social care
Autumn 2010: Publish new vision for social care, including a renewed concordant with the sector and a refreshed carers strategy
Spring 2011: Report by Law Commission
Summer 2011: Report by Commission on social care funding
Autumn 2011: Publish new Social Care White Papter, to be followed by legislation and funding agreements

Alongside the political agenda however, a few themes in particular emerged for me during the day:

• The need to make the economic as well as the social case for investing in care, potentially drawing on research such as that set out by Carers UK, which estimates additional income to the state of £750m - £1.5 billion if carers could be enabled to work
• How to make technology work for people who are not very IT literate, with a need to start by looking at individuals. As Simon Roberts from Intel brought out, the problem is one of imagination not technology
• The potential benefits of recognising the skills and contributions that carers and those needing services can offer, rather than seeing the process as one-way delivery.  Reports such as that by NESTA /nef on co-production provide some interesting starting points in this area
• International similarities in issues and approach, with the potential to share learning between countries. Of particular interest for Opportunity Links’ work is that information and advice is consistently recognised as key, although less focus is given to how to develop this into effective practice.

In turn, there was interest in Opportunity Links practical experience in developing access to high quality information and advice. In particular, our emerging work to help develop an online peer support network for people with dementia and our involvement in creating BeGrand.net to provide online information and advice for grandparents led to some interesting conversations.

The ideas generated by the conference will help us to keep building and exploring new ways to help individuals effectively access information and advice as the Government’s agenda continues to unfold.

The audio clip will be available to listen again from Wednesday 30 June: go to Listen Again - Antonia Brickell’s Drivetime Show, Tues 29 June

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cambridgeshire/hi/tv_and_radio/

Later in the week I attended UX London, a UK-based conference focused entirely on user experience design. Day 1 was full of inspirational talks, the first by Jesse James Garrett where the message was that to design for a great user experience, you need to engage the user. Engagement was definitely the word of the week. Peter Morville, an expert in Library Information Science, confirmed that faceted navigation was definitely the way to go in searching by providing a simple next step for the user. Other topics covered metrics, designing for improvisation and how to engage users by using psychology to motivate them. There were a few experts from other fields. Scott McCloud a comic artist and Michael B. Johnson from Pixar who shared knowledge from their disciplines that would also be applicable to UX design. Days 2 and 3 were workshop days, where there was a variety of lecture-based (designing for the usage life-cycle) and hands-on courses available (user interview techniques). One of my favourites was Stephen P. Anderson’s workshop, How To Think With Pretty Pictures (Demystifying Concept Models).

Mariko Brittain

NServiceBus

As part of Opp Link’s commitment to staff training I was recently allowed to go along to a course all about Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) at Skills Matter in London. The full name of the course was “Udi Dahan’s Enterprise Development with NServiceBus“. The really cool thing is that the course is run by the chap who actually wrote NServiceBus. Which meant he really knew what he was talking about.

NServiceBus 2 day course

I now can’t wait to get cracking with NServiceBus, well really the SOA concepts and I’ve thought of loads of places it can be used here at Opp Links.

Dave Craft

The Liberal Democrat Paul Burstow has been appointed as a Minister within the Department of Health, with specific responsiblity for social care.  He has stated that “urgent reform of the social care system is at the top of our agenda” - a comment reinforced by the confirmation within the Queen’s Speech that a Commission on long-term care will be established and report within a year.  In addition, the Coalition Agreement sets out the Government’s intention to support elderly people to live at home for longer, re-establish the link between earnings and the state pension, extend the rollout of personal budgets and priorise dementia research - all signs that the Government recognises the urgent need to address the issues raised by our ageing population.  Realistically, we can not expect social care to be immune to spending cuts. However, with reports also emerging that the final year of the Social Care Reform Grant will remain ringfenced (although possibly reduced) it appears that this area at least remains firmly on the Government’s agenda. 

The situation is less clear for families.  The change from the Department for Children, Schools and Families to the Department for Education could be read as a sign that families will have a lower priority under the new regime - particularly when coupled with the Secretary of State, Michael Gove’s, comment that the Department will refocus on “its core purpose of supporting teaching and learning”. 

However, this is not an area which has been abandonned completely.  We have both a Minister for Children and Families (Sarah Teather - interestingly also a Liberal Democrat) and a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Tim Loughton).  Equally, a chapter of the Coalition Agreement is dedicated to families and children.  This sets out a commitment to keep the goal to end child poverty by 2020, retain both Sure Start and tax credits (although with some reshaping) and support the provision of free nursery care.  In addition, a system of flexible parental leave may be introduced and greater access rights for non-resident parents and grandparents are to be explored.  Whilst this may not represent the levels of investment we have seen over the last decade, it does at least avoid the full-scale cuts of initiatives such as Sure Start and tax credits that had been predicted a year or so ago.

However, whilst we can be tentatively positive about these initial signs, it is the detail that will be important.  The decisions about which aspects of support for families and social care will be prioritised, which programmes discontinued, which agencies scrapped and which grants cut should emerge over coming weeks and months.  With first an emergency budget on 22 June and then the Comprehensive Spending Review in the autumn, there is still much left to confirm about the future for families and adult social care under this Government.

Uk Tech days

Here are the thoughts of 3 of our developers who were lucky enough to go along to
the Microsoft tech-days 2010 event.

Day 1 - Visual Studio 2010 Launch Day

“The First day of the event introduced the long awaited Microsoft Visual Studio 2010
(VS 2010) and some of its new features. Microsoft have been working hard to bring
together the development and testing by adding “MS Test and Lab Manager” this allows
testers to record and log their actions so developer can see exactly how the bug
was created. Other useful user interface features included code zoom and the ability
to use VS 2010 across two monitors, speeding up development. They have also made
it much easier to write applications for multi core processor, unleashing the processing
power of most modern computers.”

Mark Few – Web Developer

Day 2 - Getting started with .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010

“Day 2 comprised of detailing the new features of Microsoft’s .NET Framework 4 and
Visual Studio 2010 and how they improve the programming process. The feature i found
most interesting was the concept of parallel programming and how easy it is for
the programmer to utilise in .NET Framework 4 and Visual Studio 2010. Use of parallel
programming could dramatically increase the speed and therefore the usability of
our current and future products. The final presentation of the day (Fun Programming
with Visual Studio) was given by a lively and little eccentric lecturer from Hull
University named Rob Miles, which helped keep the concentration at the end of a
long information packed day (especially for a programming novice like myself).”

Hans Keller - Junior Web Developer

Day 3 - The Essential Mix

“I attended The Essential Mix on the Wednesday which was focussed on user experience.
The morning started off with an overview of the latest design technologies and applications
- ASP.NET 4, Visual Studio 2010, Silverlight 4 and Expression Blend 4. My favourite
talk of the day was given by the witty german, Michael Koster (who sounded just
like a James Bond baddie). He gave a demo of how to use Expression Blend and showcased
a very cool looking data visualisation implementation. It was also quite interesting
to hear about Internet Explorer 9!”

Mariko Brittain- Web Developer

As both Putting People First and the recent Local Authority Circular make clear, the outcomes of this transformation are not limited to public services targeted at those eligible for state funding.  Rather, future social care should also encompass self-funders, those who might need services in the future and those with lower level and preventative social care needs as well as families and carers.  In addition, support needs to be shaped around individuals, enabling them to help themselves and each other.

It is therefore unsurprising that access to universal, joined up information and advice (I&A) has been identified as one of the five priority areas for this first stage of the transformation, and as such is an area for which LAs should use this year’s Social Care Reform Grant funding.

To view information on Opportunity Links work within this area go to our website.

Chief

Overall, Opportunity Links welcomes the value given to families by the Green Paper, and particularly its recognition of the important role of high quality, accessible information and advice. We also agreed with the Green Paper that the role played by family members other than mothers - including grandparents, kinship carers and fathers - should be acknowledged and supported.

Our response focussed primarily on the proposals put forward around information and advice for families, and specifically addressed consultation question 6, which asked: “Would a comprehensive advice service on family issues based on successful models like NHS Direct and the NHS Carers Direct service make it easier for families to find the help they need?  This could consist of a national online service coupled with a single telephone number.”

In responding to this question, we reviewed priorities that our work in this area over the past 15 years has shown are critical for information and advice to reach and be of value to those who need it.  We also took into account feedback from Families Information Services, and other key stakeholders, gained through discussion and consultation at a number of regional sessions.

We concluded that a national comprehensive advice service could help families to find the help that they need.  However, we believe that this should complement, rather than replace or duplicate, existing information and advice provision such as FIS and is likely to require significant investment to be successful. 

We see potential benefits as including:

• Increased public awareness and access to information, assuming a strong brand and marketing approach similar to NHS Direct
• Simplicity of a single number / website, linked to the specialist and local support required, through which to direct all enquiries about family issues
• Extended access, ideally through a 24/7 phone line and website
• Increased integration across the current range of services and delivery points, leading to efficiencies and reducing duplications.

Our response also included a number of specific recommendations covering points which we believe are required to ensure such a service truly supports the needs of parents and families.  These include a clearly defined brand and scope (also incorporating local and specialist services); integrated service delivery; and recommendations for ensuring needs are understood and met, such as training and experience of staff responding to phone enquiries.

On Sunday 7th March he completed the Cambridge Marathon in 3 hours 46 minutes, and in just under a months time on Sunday 11th April, Hans will be joining 40,000 other runners in the Marathon de Paris.

Hans is raising money for UNICEF, the world’s leading organisation working for children and their rights in more than 190 countries.

Commenting on his fundraising efforts, Hans said: “I really enjoyed taking part in the Cambridge Marathon and I am now training hard to beat my time in the Marathon de Paris.  I’m also pleased to be raising money for such a good cause”.

Anyone wishing to donate money should go to www.justgiving.com/cambridge-paris.

Working in the development team at Opportunity Links has its benefits:

• Membership to the Cambridge
  NxtGenUG.
• Yearly visits to development conferences such as:
  • Future of Web Apps
  • Future of Web Design
  • Dev Week
  • Stackoverflow
    DevDays
  • MSDN Roadshows
  • UX (User Xperience)
  • @ Media
  • etc
• Regular Hack days
• MSDN Subscriptions
• Technical books when ever you want

Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework

This year we were lucky enough to get 2 days of
Steven Standerson’s time to help
us kick start a new Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2 project. I saw Steven presenting at
the Stackoverflow conference in Cambridge last year and was very impressed with
how much information he managed to cram into a 1 hour slot. I spoke to him after
his talk and asked him if he had any tips on getting started with MVC on
something a little more “enterprise size” and he had lots of say on the matter. So
when we were asked to start “Project X”, we were very keen to get our
hands dirty with Microsoft ASP.NET MVC 2. Mainly because of how free you are
with the mark up and how much that will help us utilize jQuery.

Steven was the obvious choice of consultant to help us kick start the project as
he’s been doing regular screen casts for the
TekPub series on MVC 2. Myself and
the other 2 Senior Web Developers (Jez and Mark) locked ourselves away for 2 days to grill
Steven on all things MVC 2.

Day 1

After initial introductions and a bit of background Steven was able to get going
with a potential solution right away. The things we covered in day 1 were:

• Picking an IoC library and getting that into the project. In the end we opted
  for Ninject.
• Deciding that we were going to use the view model approach and putting the
  architecture in place for that.
• Getting started with JQGrid and
  jQuery in MVC 2.
• Using the new Strongly typed Helpers in the view model
• Using EditorTemplates
• Linking the MVC Validation to our own business rules.

Day 2

Day 2 was all about creating a working POC. It included the following things:

• Dropping in AutoMapper for the left right code.
• Creating a full editor page with Lists/Popups and all done client side for a
  rich user experience.
• Decision about how to handle state.

Conclusion

Development Team with Steven Sanderson

The 2 days were really useful for us and we learnt a hell of a lot. Mainly how
much javascript and jQuery we are going to be using in this new project. This
will hopefully provide our customers with a very rich user experience and will
get as close as we can get to working on a desktop application. After the
meeting i quickly ordered jQuery in action as I think it’s going to be a major
requirement of this new project.

You can hire Steven your self through his
web site.