United Response works hard to include people in our work in all areas. Here are just some of the ways in which we do this.
Choosing staff
People want to choose the staff that support them. We provide people with the skills to choose their own support staff and to recruit other staff across the organisation too.
Now more than 70% of all our appointments – including directors and trustees – are made with the input of people we support.
A group of people who are already trained in choosing staff are now offering training to others. This is so that even more people can be involved.
Promoting self advocacy and informing our work
By promoting self advocacy we have helped many people gain in experience and confidence. Some have even set up their own self advocacy groups.
One such group of people with learning disabilities in the Midlands developed their own constitution, elected their own officers, and secured external funding to employ their own worker. There are other organised groups in the North West, Greater Manchester area, the South and others. Some of these groups also involve people who are not supported by United Response, making them truly inclusive and user-led.
We consult people we support about United Response’s plans and hold regular sessions with people to review what’s working and what’s not working in all areas of their lives. These are then fed right up to the organisation – to the trustee board if necessary – enabling crucial changes to the policies that affect people’s everyday lives, as well as their aspirations.
People we support have also been involved in meetings with the Directors Team on key aspects of our work, and have made very important contributions to improving the way we work at all levels.
We also have a National User Panel so that people we support can feed their views directly to trustees and directors on a regular basis.
Accessible communication
More than half of the people we support have a communication impairment. Many do not speak, read or write. Others may not understand the spoken word and written language.
People may communicate in other ways, using pictures, signs or gestures.
We provide people with practical day-to-day support so they can take as much control of their lives as possible. Making information accessible through various methods including audiotape, signed videotape and simplified text with pictures increases the power and knowledge of the people we support.
People we support have their own communication profile. This identifies how they like to communicate, what their support needs are and what specialist equipment they might need.
We make sure people have not only the tools they need to communicate in the way they want, but that our staff are trained too. This means we can really listen to the people we support and communicate with them in the way they want us to.
Often, accessible information helps other groups of people too – including those who do not have English as their first language, or people who have a low level of literacy. We want to do much more to raise the importance of accessible communications.
We have a disability consultancy, called UR Consultants, which provides training in communications awareness and accessible information. UR Consultants can also work with you to produce accessible versions of your own information.
Find out more about UR Consultants.
The external world
We support people to speak up and speak out on the issues that affect them in the external world too.
People we support have been involved in a number of reviews including The Better Regulation Task Force, The GSCC and the Supporting People reports.
Some people have made presentations at the ADSS conference, Learning Disability Today conferences and elsewhere in meetings.
Most recently we have launched our Every Vote Counts campaign to help people to get involved with democracy and issues that affect them at all levels.
Visit the Every Vote Counts website.
People we support have made a DVD about what it is like to have a learning disability and be discriminated against.
