The Way We Work

The Way We Work programme is at the heart of developing and sustaining a person-centred culture right across United Response. The key elements are:

The Way We Work framework

This places each person we support at the centre of their life and enables us to work with them to plan our support around what they need and what they want.

Person-centred thinking tools

These give staff a practical toolkit to help them take a creative approach to problem solving and to help people to create their own person centred plans. Tools include "what's working and what's not working?" Learning Logs and "4+1 questions" — "What have we tried? What have we learned? What are we pleased about? What are we concerned about? And given all that — what next?"

Feedback from the use of the tools and person centred approaches is shared at annual divisional and national Learning & Reflection Days, and the outcomes are fed into our corporate plan.

Person-centred active support

This approach supports people with even the most complex needs to engage in meaningful activity and relationships as active participants. Instead of doing things FOR people it involves working with people to enable them to take part in all the activities of everyday life, no matter how disabled they are.

Positive Behaviour Support

This involves identifying the situations and events that may trigger people to behave in ways that staff may find challenging, and then changing — or if possible, avoiding — these situations to reduce the likelihood that these behaviors will occur. This approach increases quality in people we support’ s lives and puts them back in control.

Positive Risk Taking

Taking risk is a part of everyone's everyday life — and we believe that everyone, including people with learning disabilities, has the right to take risks. We work with each person we support to give them the support they need to take the risks they want and to make informed choices. And we support our staff to use their judgement in evaluating risks and in taking this very person-centred and positive approach, balancing what is important to each person (to do the things they want to do in their life) with what is important for them (to keep them healthy and safe).

Work around positive risk taking has been supported through our Developing the Way We Work programme. Guidance is also available via our health and safety handbook and quality manual, plus access to expert advice from central functions such as the health and safety team, and updates on new legislation, for example the Mental Capacity Act, from our policy team.