Shared Lives carer and super volunteer, Paul
This week is Volunteers’ Week. Volunteers were the foundation of Shared Lives when we first invented to model of care in 1978. PSS pioneered a service where these older people would go and live with a volunteer who wanted to help them. It worked, and over time the service began to evolve, changing and developing to become what it is today – the fastest growing form of social care in the UK.
These days, the service isn’t run by volunteers, support’s provided by our amazing Shared Lives carers.
One thing that hasn’t changed though is the spirit of giving in our Shared Lives carer and today we’re shining a spotlight on all of the hard work that Shared Lives carer, Paul, from Liverpool does for PSS and beyond.
Putting Paul in the spotlight
Paul is a Shared Lives carer who gives a lot of his time to PSS. He’s always looking for new ways he can support people. This year, Paul stepped up and became a Chair for our Shared Lives panel. He offers a wealth of knowledge around supporting people in a person-centred way. He lives the PSS values through and through.
What is a Shared Lives panel?
To help up recruit the very best shared lives carers about, we rally a troop of experts together for our panels. This could be our staff, current shared lives carers, people we support, family members of the people we support. It can also be professionals such as social workers and others who are passionate about people and social care. This diverse group of people form our Shared Lives panel. The panel assess potential Shared Lives carers and current carers. They only approve people who are fantastic at what they do.
By volunteering to be our Chair, Paul is really helping find us the very best carers to join our Shared Lives scheme, it’s an integral role and we couldn’t do it without him! It’s a pleasure to be with him on panel and everyone really enjoys the panels that they share with him.
Well done, Paul!
Interested in becoming a Shared Lives carer?
You’re in the right place! We’re recruiting Shared Lives carers across all of our regions now and we’d love to hear from you. If you’d like more information about being a Shared Lives carer it’s just a hop, skip and a jump over to the homepage of this website. You’ll find all the info you need as well as the chance to get a phone call from one of our friendly team members.
Or, if you think you’re ready to get started on becoming a Shared Lives carer, register your interest here: