always a new adventure
Summer institute - Cheltenham 2024
facilitated by
livesthroughfriends, plan and
vanguard @ the butterfly garden
“Maybe this award reflects, at long last, a dawning grassroots awareness that there is much more to life than services? I
don’t regard it as a reward for me but rather all those leaders, practitioners and thinkers who have repeatedly
demonstrated that sustaining real care demands a societal rather than transactional commitment; and all the colleagues
and allies who, against the system grain, tenaciously put relationships and community at the heart of their practice. The
expansion of markets, and of market values, into spheres of life where they don’t belong is fundamental to the ‘social care
crisis’. Perhaps we’re not too far away from a time when Government understands that its job is to set out purpose and
not to prescribe and regulate the method? Many thanks to the Community Foundation and those who expressed a view.”
Bob Rhodes
-Bob Rhodes
For dedicating his life to service, leading social work, nursing, and services for people with
autism and disabilities, founding LivesthroughFriends CIC, and championing community-based
alternatives while advocating for the disadvantaged throughout his career.
Community Inspiration Awards
Exciting New
Articles
Two groundbreaking reports on Children
and Families with autistic members have
been released this week, exposing the
system’s persistent failure to understand
autism and provide supportive,
personalised, and empathetic responses.
Authored by WMADASS, close
collaborators with LivesThroughFriends,
these reports shine a spotlight on critical
challenges and call for urgent action.
Read more
Cheltenham
Summer
Institute
“THERE IS ANOTHER WAY?”
17th – 19th September 2024
An exciting ‘Headspace’ opportunity for Policy Makers, Leaders
and innovative Practitioners in Learning Disability and Autism
Services in a diversity of jurisdictions to take time out to engage in
some ‘out-of-the-box’ experiences, thinking and deliberation.
Following a successful collaboration delivering EASPD’s
Deinstitutionalisation and Inclusion ‘Lighthouse’ in 2023, the
Summer Institute is again organised and facilitated by
LivesthroughFriends, Vanguard Consulting, The PLAN Institute,
and hosted by The Butterfly Garden.
The Lighthouse
Event 2023
“Seeing your work and your scientific
integrity made us feel secure and
optimistic. We trusted you. You shared
your experience with us and you guided us
since the very beginning in creating the
first Supported Living service in Greece.
You were always by our side, hearing our
concerns, understanding our fears and
supporting us in finding solutions to the
problems we faced.”
@ The Butterfly Garden
Petagma, 2022
0.0s
Our Goals are
Simple but
Challenging...
To contribute to the evolution of the personalisation thrust and the restoring of power in
respect of social welfare to individuals, families and communities
To demonstrate the necessity and viability of a wide diversity of initiatives to not only
support people to successfully self-direct but also, and as importantly, to effect a culture
change in favour of self-reliance and reciprocity through local action
To raise grassroots awareness of the opportunities on offer and support people and
organisations to grasp them
To constructively criticise initiatives that unnecessarily retain power and control in the
hands of public bureaucracies
To contribute to the emergence of a movement of people who believe that there‘s more to
life than services