science

Shared lives

Shared lives is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Shared lives rather than just read about it. In short: Shared Lives, which is also known as Adult Placement in some areas, is a UK form of support and accommodation for adults with need wherein approved individuals or families open their lives to aid older or disabled persons. Over 10,000 Shared Lives carers in the UK provided care to people with a wide range of disabilities, illnesses and support needs, including people with learning disabilities, people with mental he…

Key takeaways

Shared lives belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Shared lives to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Shared lives from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Shared Lives, which is also known as Adult Placement in some areas, is a UK form of support and accommodation for adults with need wherein approved individuals or families open their lives to aid older or disabled persons. Over 10,000 Shared Lives carers in the UK provided care to people with a wide range of disabilities, illnesses and support needs, including people with learning disabilities, people with mental health problems, older people, care leavers (government wards aging out of care), disabled children becoming young adults, parents with learning disabilities and their children, and ex-offenders. Shared Lives carers are recruited, trained, approved, monitored and paid by one of the UK's 150 regulated Shared Lives schemes. The goal of Shared Lives is to match the individuals in need of service with others who will be compatible to them to act as 'extended family'. While generally the individual in need of support will move into the home of the carer, sometimes service is provided in their own homes, as day support, as breaks for unpaid family carers, as home from hospital care and as a stepping stone for someone who wants to get their own place.

Users According to a Care Quality Commission report for 2009–2010, more than 10,788 people in England used Shared Lives. While the Care Quality Commission showed minor increases from the prior year, Information Centre statistics collated through different methodology showed a 36% increase in the same period. 13% of users were over 65, with the vast majority (76%) consisting of persons between 18 and 64 with learning disability. Mental health problems (7%) and physical disabilities (3%) were less represented. Use of Shared Lives is also increasing in Wales, with a 30% rise to 303 households in 2008–2009, while use in Scotland doubled between 2006 and 2009.

Regulation Shared Lives Schemes in the UK are regulated under:

the Health and Social Care Act 2008 [in England]; the Adult Placement Scheme (Wales) Regulations 2004; the Regulation of Care (Scotland) Act 2001, superseded April 2011 by the Public Services Reform (Scotland) Act 2010 (Schedule 12); the Adult Placement Agencies Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2007.

Shared Lives Plus Shared Lives Plus, a charity based in Liverpool, is the UK network for family-based and small-scale ways of supporting adults to live independently and to contribute to their families and communities. Its members are Shared Lives carers and workers, Homeshare programmes and micro-enterprises, which include a range of very small community-based services that share adult placement values and ethos. Alex Fox is the chief executive. NHS England announced the allocation of £1.75 million in 2016 to support to 6 to 10 Clinical commissioning groups to develop Shared Lives schemes which:

Help to move people with learning disabilities out of medical institutions Offer live-in mental health support instead of hospital treatment Provide ‘step down’ services for people who have had health crises Support people with dementia Shared Lives Plus supported this programme. In 2016 the organisation merged with Homeshare UK and formed a partnership with Homeshare International. Lloyds Bank Foundation and Big Lottery Fund have each contributed £1 million in funding and evaluating local Homeshare pilots.

Notes

References NHS Information Centre, The (2009) Community Care Statistics 2008-09: Social Services Activity Report, England London, HM Government. Available at: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/publications/Social%20Care/socialcarepubs280410/Community%20Care%20Statistics%20Social%20Services%20Activity%20Report%20England%20-%202008-09%20FINAL2.pdf. NAAPS (2011) The Shared Life of my choice Liverpool, NAAPS.

External links Shared Lives Plus, the charity representing Shared Lives in the UK

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Shared lives

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Shared lives claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Shared lives before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Shared lives ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Shared lives

In research: Shared lives appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Shared lives in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Shared lives is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Community building, Deinstitutionalisation, Learning disabilities, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Shared lives outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Shared lives in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Shared lives means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Shared lives out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Shared lives in simple terms?

Why does Shared lives matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Shared lives?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Shared lives.