The Three Conversations was introduced as an approach to adult social care in June 2019 as part of a major Transformation programme, working in the Early Intervention Team with about half of all new people making requests for support. It then expanded to cover most of the remaining new requests and was subsequently introduced for people with existing care and support in August 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic. Working collaboratively with a project team including Partners 4 Change, the Mosaic (database) team and Business Intelligence, the innovation site staff co-designed the three innovations running for 12-16 weeks each. Results from the first year of working in this…

When I first heard Sam Newman talk about The Three Conversations® I knew it was an approach that could push the boundaries of what we had been doing in our mental health social care team. Having dissolved the s75 arrangements with the local Trust in 2012, the team had strengthened its social work identity and was working in a Care Act compliant way. The legacy of working within a medical model system was still apparent however, and visiting people at home to ‘carry out assessments’, ‘undertake reviews’ and ‘put in services to meet need’ was only continuing to reinforce a…

“If you really want to change practice then you have to adopt a new language” Sam Newman, Director, Partners4Change. Conversations Count is based on The Three Conversations®. Partners4Change have a list of words that are banned in their approach. Many of these words describe what we currently do, including ‘assessment’, ‘review’, ‘allocation’, ‘hand-off’, ‘referral’, ‘pathway’, ‘journey’ and ‘waiting list’. Others describe who we currently do these things to: ‘customer’; ‘client’; ‘service user’; ‘case’. All the banned words are words that we use all the time. We weren’t sure about banning words. It felt a bit extreme. So, we described the…

The London Borough of Redbridge began The Three Conversations® journey in autumn 2017. I was invited to a project board meeting with our Director and other senior managers, where I met Sam Newman from Partners4Change, and believe it or not, my first thought was – wow! This man is passionate about The Three Conversations® but at the same time I felt quite sceptical about how it would work in practice. Sam began by telling us about the approach with an overview of how it fitted in with personalisation, the Care Act and Making Safeguarding Personal, as well as the financial…

Occupational Therapists (OT) are interested in how a person interacts with their environment, and the impact that this has on their daily life. The Royal College of Occupational Therapy (RCOT) defines occupation as “the practical and purposeful activities that allow people to live independently and have a sense of identity”. This could be anything from essential day to day activities such as self-care, all the way through to work commitments or leisure activities. OTs consider how these occupations are: • Motivated: what are the person’s values, interests and motivations? • Patterned: how behaviour is organised, such as daily tasks and…

Partners4Change have been asked several times how The Three Conversations® works within a provider setting. Susan Ripton from ECL Sensory Service stepped forward to share the organisation’s experience of taking The Three Conversations® forward as part of Essex County Council Good Lives programme as a Trusted Assessor. The Good Lives model creates a new relationship between professionals and the people they are working with. So, when ECC asked for volunteers to become an innovation site, ECL Sensory Service stepped forward. The innovation site focussed on a cohort of people who were newly certified with sight impairments by a hospital consultant…