As the third and final part of my musings on friendships and connections over the last few weeks, I wanted to share a quick story. I hope it will put a smile on your face as we get back into real life after the long weekend.

I wanted to do a bit more musing this week on friendships and connections. I reflect on the role of paid support in people’s lives in facilitating and supporting friendships connections and relationships. Are you looking for look opportunities to facilitate/nurture/grow/support connections and relationships? Is it a priority?

In this blog I reflect on friendships, connections and relationships - all the stuff that’s covered under Test Four. We need to buck our ideas up about what constitutes friendship and accept that we all do it in very different ways. When we judge someone's ability to have friends, we're talking baloney.

Ciaran Cameron turned 30 on the 19th of March, so we are in the middle of a week of various celebrations, reminiscing and wondering what's next!

So, it's the end of the I Open My Own Front Door, Do You? campaign… well, the start of it, I guess, as this was the launch week - but don’t think it’s gone away. In this blog I reflect on a couple of things that have really hit home for me since the campaign began.

In preparation for our campaign this week, ‘I Open My Own Front Door, Do You?’ I asked friends, colleagues, and family to share what ‘front door’ as a concept means to them. The majority of this blog is what people told me - beautiful, heartfelt, thoughtful quotes.

This week, I can chat with Sam Clark, Chief Executive of ⁠Learning Disability England⁠. We talk about the importance of people opening their own front doors as we share a new campaign - I Open My Own Front Door, Do You? - by Gloriously Ordinary Lives in partnership with Learning Disability England.

This week, I share a new campaign - I Open My Own Front Door, Do You? - by Gloriously Ordinary Lives in partnership with Learning Disability England.

This week I explore the idea of independence - how we use it in social care, and whether sometimes, it’s just about someone needing their shoes put on so they can get to the pub?

If you’ve been here a while, you’ll know I’m a bit obsessed with all things ‘language’. Fast forward to today - Bryony Shannon and I are thrilled to launch Gloriously Ordinary Language.

This week, I explore what happens when dreams and aspirations, the things we want to do in our gloriously ordinary lives, are turned into outcomes by Serviceland.

This week I chat with James Townsend, Co-Founder and CEO of ⁠Mobilise⁠. We reflect on the importance of shifting how local councils view families, focusing on supporting them to live gloriously ordinary lives. It's about having early conversations, rethinking relationships between people with a caring role and those they support, and opening up new ways of understanding those connections.

Having always wanted to protect my kids’ identity by talking about them as The Boy and The Girl, The Boy is ready to let it be known who he is. There’s a great reason for this, which I share in this blog.

I am pleased to introduce Ciaran Cameron.

This week I reflect on how we truly support people to live their own Gloriously Ordinary Lives — even when it doesn't match our idea of 'gloriously ordinary'.

In episode 9, I chat with Kate Mercer from ⁠Black Belt Advocacy⁠.

On the podcast we talk about how advocacy is being alongside somebody - it's not just a job role. People have different wants and needs, and Gloriously Ordinary Lives is about unlocking what's important to a person. We reflect on the role of advocacy in creating Gloriously Ordinary Lives, and introduce our new training programme,⁠ 'Advocating with and for Gloriously Ordinary Lives'⁠.

Quick one this week. Consider it a public service announcement (and in no way a rant, not at all).

Gloriously Ordinary Lives is in danger of becoming GOL.

This week, I reflect on the power of words - how we write about ourselves, and what we say and write about people. It matters because it impacts how we then think about support and how people might want to live their lives - but so often, we get this wrong. How much would you like someone to write a plan for your life and hold you to it, making out that you had written it yourself?

I’m getting increasingly clear that the essence of Gloriously Ordinary Lives is paying attention to the mundane and the heart sing - and after a recent conversation, I’ve realised… that heart ZING plays an important role, too!

In episode 8 of the Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast, I chat with the wonderful ⁠Mary Gardner.

Mary and I discuss how Direct Payments and personal assistants are a key route to Gloriously Ordinary Lives. We share 5 top tips for Local Authorities on making Direct Payments and personal assistants work effectively.

This week’s post is a quick one as I wrap up my time in Kefalonia. I’ve been working with Beyond Limits recently and together, we’ve spent time exploring Test Three (the photo test). Steve’s reminder that "it’s all in the eyes" stuck with me—true joy can’t be faked. Curiosity is key when looking at a photo; sometimes what you don’t see tells the real story.