Lucianne Sawyer CBE

Lucianne Sawyer CBE, Dip.SA, MSc started her career in healthcare as a State Registered Nurse. Lucianne obtained a Diploma in Social Administration (Distinction) at LSE and then spent some years as a researcher concerned with service delivery. Her main areas of interest were learning disability (including the effects on families of autism and brain damage in adolescents), older people, and GP services. Somewhere along the line she also obtained an MSc. in Social Research.

As a result of research into services for older people Lucianne set up a home care business to provide more responsive and flexible support. At one stage Care Alternatives was the fourth largest independent home care provider in the UK. When it merged with Anchor Trust in the mid 1990s Lucianne became their Director of Community Services, with responsibility for its call centre, home care, and staying put branches.

Late in the 1980s she helped found the UK Home Care Association in order to campaign for high standards and regulation in the industry. She has now been its President for 15 years. She has researched, written and spoken widely on home care matters, on the support of older people, and on other aspects of social care over the last 18 years.

Since 2000 she has been running a busy consultancy working with a range of organisations and local authorities. She was a member of the Reference Group of the DH Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) and is still a preferred consultant. The following are some of the projects she (and sometimes colleagues) have undertaken:

• Produced a report in 2007 on recruitment and retention of social care staff for CSIP.
• Led CSIP’s Outcomes Network until funding ceased in May 2008, providing a series of workshops.
• Managed a project with Nuffield Health Institute aimed at supporting two local authorities to move to more person-centred home care services.
• A major strategic review of and recommendations for Leonard Cheshire’s home care services.
• Review and recommendations on the future of a local authority in-house service.
• Review and recommendations on improving home care providers’ capacity in a large rural local authority.
• Assisted in designing and planning an outcome-based re-ablement service for a health/social care service.
• Commissioned to provide series of training sessions for local authorities and PCTs in SW Region to implement personalisation.

Lucianne was a commissioner with the National Care Standards Commission (now twice replaced) and has been a member of CSCI’s Older People’s (Service) Improvement Board. She was a member of the group which developed the National Minimum Standards for Home Care Services. She has also served on a number of other government or national committees or groups, including being a member of the Quality section of the reference group which developed recommendations for the National Dementia Strategy.

Lucianne was a trustee of, and until recently chaired, the UK Parkinson’s Disease Society. She also chairs a small voluntary organisation which provides accommodation and support for young people at risk of homelessness.

She was a carer for some years for her father with Parkinson’s Disease and her mother with Alzheimers. She was awarded a CBE in 2001 for her services to health and social care.