Alex Fox: Shared Lives

Website: www.sharedlivesplus.org.uk

Alex Fox is Chief Executive of Shared Lives Plus, formerly  NAAPs, a UK charity that represents the interests of family-based and very small providers of care and support to older and disabled people.

Its members are Shared Lives carers (trained and approved carers who have agreed to care for an older or disabled person in their family), homeshare programmes (in which someone who needs support or companionship to continue to live independently in their own home is matched with someone who lacks housing), and micro-enterprises.

Shared Lives Plus also works with its social enterprise, Community Catalysts, which works across the UK through local partners to support local enterprise. A major focus of its current work is with local authorities and health trusts keen to create an environment within which micro entrepreneurs can flourish.

Alex also sits on the Standing Commission on Carers and the board of the Think Local, Act Personal partnership. He co-leads on prevention for the White Paper engagement exercise and is a board member of the Health Hotel collaboration of charities. He is a member of the editorial board of Working with Older People and Journal of Integrated Care.