A family member told us recently: ‘We will only ask for what we think is available, so enabling families to ask for what they need is complicated, because we don't know what's possible.'

The art of the possible has rarely felt more challenging for the councils and integrated care boards we are working with, as the economics of public service provision start to verge on the impossible for many of them. But when the financial challenges are existential, the solutions are rarely purely financial.

In Lincolnshire, we are working alongside adult social care colleagues and elected members, as they reimagine what is possible, which for colleagues there always starts with the Lincolnshire Conversation: a human interaction led by what matters to people, and what an individual or family and the practitioner can create together in response.

Lincolnshire's executive director of adult care and community wellbeing, Martin Samuels, will lead our session at this year's Association of Directors of Adult Social Services Spring Seminar, exploring how Lincolnshire and other areas are combining a strong grip on the current and projected outcomes and costs, with a creative approach to the art of the possible coproduced with individuals and families.

Our Valuing Good Lives approach enables practitioners to have conversations which are unique to each individual or family, but to do so with the consistency needed to enable commissioners and leaders to identify and shape the big strategic commissioning and community-shaping opportunities which we still find in even the most financially-challenged areas.

If you are attending the Spring Seminar, we'd love to hear how your area is approaching this period's unique challenges. Visit us at our workshop, or on our stand where we will be showcasing the latest evidence of councils achieving better outcomes for less in adult social care, mental health and across public services.

Alex Fox OBE – Delivery Director for IMPOWER and author of A New Health and Care System

This article is sponsored content for The MJ