Happy birthday to the ASPire Hub!

I’m really thrilled to write that the ASPire Hub is now two years old!

Everything on the ASPire Hub supports Adult Support & Protection. We bring together national and locally-produced resources to create a one-stop-shop for ASP knowledge. Seeing the ASPire Hub blossom has been an experience that’s made me very proud. We started with little more than a shoutout for help and have, two years later, grown into a home for over 270 resources.

The ASPire Hub represents the work of three people: Brenda Walker, the National Adult Support and Protection Co-Ordinator who links the work into the ASP community across Scotland; Ian Phillip, Iriss’s designer, who made it appealing and usable; and me, Jeanette Sutton (Development Lead at Iriss), as the curator and caretaker.

If you’ll indulge me in a little nostalgia, it has been fun to look back at the time of its birth. I dug out an email from early 2024 I wrote to Ian about how I thought the ASPire Hub might look and what it might do. My excitement is quite sweet. For instance, I wrote about the featured resource functionality I’d like on the landing page. “I’d imagine this would change on a monthly basis,” I wrote. “I could create new/exciting text to get pulses racing!” Maybe getting pulses racing was too much to ask, but the featured resource does look very nice, and people comment on how useful it is to see something new when they visit.

The original idea of the ASPire Hub was to have a single point of access for ASP resources across Scotland. It was there for you if you were in direct practice, and keen on finding resources on a topic like domestic abuse or financial abuse; it was also there for you if you were more strategic, and interested in looking at others’ local guidance and frameworks on various topics.

As time has gone on, and the ASPire Hub has become the go-to for ASP resources in Scotland, its remit has widened. For instance, it’s a partner to the National Framework for Adult Support and Protection Learning and Development in Scotland; all the recommended resources for building ASP knowledge contained in the Framework are in one convenient place. This wasn’t something we’d imagined at the beginning, but it has made perfect sense and saves everyone a lot of time.

The ASPire Hub is also the home for all the work of the multi-agency ASP National Implementation Group. So many useful resources here, from involvement of advocacy to the adult’s participation in case conferences; all Scotland-specific, all developed by people who live and breathe these issues.

When the ASPire Hub launched, I was happy to give anybody and everybody a demonstration. This ranged from dialling in to a local team meeting to high-profile presentations to MSPs. I loved showing it off. As it’s a well-used and well-loved part of the ASP landscape in Scotland now, people don’t need my demonstrations any more, but writing this blog has been a lovely way to show off again.

Although it’s changed a little in how it looks (as part of the updated Iriss website) and we’ve added lots of new features, at its heart the ASPire Hub is still the knowledge core for all things ASP in Scotland. That it’s grown so much in two short years is a testament to the hard work of everyone involved – and the curious, generous, resourceful ASP community throughout Scotland.