UR First
UR First means that we can truly include people in our work. Here are some of the ways we do that.
Who is UR First?
UR First is a group of people in United Response who are working towards making sure people are truly included in our work. UR First is made up of United Response's Inclusion Team and people from all over England.
Choosing staff
People want to choose the staff that support them. The UR First project provides training in recruitment skills for the people we support.
We set out to involve 50% of the people we support in choosing staff and we have now reached our target. People choose staff at all levels in the organisation including trustees and directors and this has become UR's policy.
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
As a result of the UR First project, many people have gained in experience and confidence. Some have set up their own groups.
UR First provides these groups with as much or as little support as they need. One self advocacy 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.
The UR First team consults people we support about the UR's plans, like the Corporate Plan. They also carried out a service user satisfaction survey to find out what people using the services thought of UR.
UR First held its first major conference with directors and trustees last year. The conference was organised by a group of people we support, with assistance from the Inclusion team. It was a great opportunity for everyone to work together, get better at being equal and to listen to each other.
People we support have also been involved in the senior manager team meetings, and have made very important contributions to improving the way we work.
Accessible Communication
An ongoing part of the UR First project is to work to provide information to the people we support in accessible formats.
Most information reaching people with learning disabilities is not accessible to them and is meaningless. We have listened to self-advocacy organisations and the people we support and decided that this must change.
Because of our work on communication, we know that most of the people we support prefer communication with pictures. UR First and the Inclusion team has been training and sharing skills with staff so that we can all make information easier to use and understand. We are also constantly developing tools to support people so they can be in control of their lives. This includes the use of multimedia to people to show others what is important in their lives.
Making information accessible to people we support -and others- through audiotape, signed videotape, simplified text with pictures and whatever way people choose - increases the power and knowledge of the people we support.
Often accessible information helps other groups of people too - including people 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 can work with you to provide accessible versions of your information. Please contact us for more information.
The External World
UR First members are having a say externally too. People we support have been involved in a number of reviews, including The Better Regulation Task Force, The GSCC and the Supporting People reviews.
Some people have made presentations at the ADSS conference, Learning Disability Today conferences and elsewhere in meetings.
Other people have recently made a DVD about what it is like to have a learning disability and be discriminated against. Find out about Can You Hear Us?
