My Support Broker

Project overview

My Support Broker is a social business that provides independent support brokerage to help people with social care needs plan and manage their support. Many of its support brokers also have lived experience of using social care services.

My Support Broker was funded by NESTA to deliver and evaluate some of this work. McPin was the evaluation partner on this project.

Working with My Support Broker was an important opportunity to learn more about the role people with lived experience of social care needs can play in supporting others to plan and manage the support that is right for them.

The project also benefited from the advice and support of academic partners at King’s College London.

Project details

Personal budgets are an important means of support in social care, and increasingly in health as well, as personal health budgets start to become available.

Getting them right so that they can genuinely increase the choice and control that people have over their care is essential.

This evaluation was an important contribution to understanding the role that independent support brokerage may have in supporting this process.

We took a qualitative approach in order to look at two key aims:

The impact of independent support brokerage on My Support Broker customers in relation to how well their support plans met their social care needs and on customer wellbeing
How local councils working with My Support Broker approached integrating independent support brokerage with their existing systems

We interviewed a range of people to do this, including My Support Broker customers, staff working at a strategic level at My Support Broker, independent Support Brokers, and staff working in two local councils who have worked in partnership with My Support Broker.

The project was led by two researchers with lived experience of using social care services for a long-term condition.

With McPin’s support, these researchers planned components of the evaluation, wrote interview schedules and conducted interviews, performed data analysis and were involved in the write-up of this project.

The two volumes of the report are available to download:

For more information about the project please email [email protected].

Project resources