I was born into poverty and trauma – now I’m helping to improve Blackpool’s adult services

Blackpool Council has appointed a team with ‘lived experience’ as it looks to create better quality adult social care after a damning “inadequate” CQC report last year.

The voices of people with real experience of adult social care have helped form a co-production board to ensure people with lived experience of adult social care, for either themselves or people they support, will shape the council’s improvement plan.

The council is currently working with care partners across the town to create better quality adult social care and create stronger communities in the town.

It comes after the CQC (Care Quality Commission) rated Blackpool Council’s adult social care “inadequate” in a highly critical report in August last year.

Although inspectors found that staff were passionate about their work and proud to work for the council, they concluded services suffered from poor safeguarding, weak leadership, and fragmented strategies for mental health and substance abuse. Inspectors found inefficient assessment processes, limited independence for service users, and inequitable care, particularly for LGBTQIA+ individuals

Since then, Blackpool Council has established an improvement board and began implementing measures to enhance senior management oversight, strengthen safety training, and improve user involvement

As part of that, the co-production board is a model that already works across children’s services in Blackpool, where local families can influence strategy and work, which has led to continuous positive feedback from parents as well as regulators Ofsted.

Lived experience

Chris Murray, a volunteer co-ordinator with the lived experience team at Empowerment Charity, will co-chair the board alongside Blackpool Council’s cabinet member for adult social care, Cllr Neal Brookes.

Mr Murray said: “I was born into multiple disadvantage, experiencing poverty, trauma, substance misuse, and the criminal justice system from an early age – challenges that created complex needs well into my adulthood.

“Having navigated systems that often struggled to respond to that reality, I now use both lived and learned experience to drive meaningful system change.

“As co-chair, my goal is to remove barriers and bridge the gap between people and services. I aim to ensure our social care responses are person-centred, trauma-informed, and built with people, ensuring lived experience genuinely shapes Blackpool’s improvement journey.”

What council says

Blackpool Council’s Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, Cllr Neal Brookes, added: “Our improvement plan is one that our whole town is playing a part in.

“Our partners across the community are taking an active role working with us to put the building blocks in place for better adult social care, and this decision will make sure that people who draw on our services will also have a stake in that improvement.

“The improvement plan is being created with the local community who can offer their real life experience of working with our staff in adult social care, so we can properly understand the challenges that they come across, what we do well and what could be improved.”

An improvement plan, which is set to be submitted in spring, will submit to government the steps that the council will make to create a better social care service following the CQC assessment.

The improvement plan is scrutinised by an independently chaired Improvement Board, including membership Blackpool Teaching Hospitals, Lancashire South Cumbria NHS Foundation Trust, Trinity Hospice, Empowerment and Blackpool Carers Centre.

The aim is to ensure that people who draw on care and support in Blackpool are fully involved in the improvement journey. That is bolstered by staff engagement, where workers from different disciplines across adult social care are also helping to shape improvements.

Since the outcome of the Care Quality Commission assessment, the council has been working to improve how it responds to people who need care and support and the priority has been to reduce waiting times for Care Act assessments.