Everyone benefits when people have the opportunity to express their ideas to management. Rosemary Trustam was invited to join a group of Real Life Options‘s service users and support staff on a course about the different working elements of the agency.
Despite the cuts, some providers are making good efforts to develop the voice of their service users and give them real influence on the service. For example, quality checking with Paradigm’s REACH standards are being extensively used across services (www.paradigm-uk.org) and, more recently, Southdown’s Q-Kit, a quality checking tool they have devised in association with people with learning disabilities, is being offered to outside organisations with training for service users (www.southdownhousing.org).
Many organisations have embedded service users in the recruitment processes on formal interview boards, training and, more recently, appraisal systems. Real life Options (RLO) decided on a bespoke model to involve service users and staged an eight-week course in two different locations run by an independent external facilitator Susan Harris (of Susan Harris Associates) and supported by a graphics recorder Kath Broomfield.
Stimulated
I was delighted to be invited to join one group of RLO service users and support staff at the end of their course in Derbyshire. Initially, they had had workshops with each member of RLO’s Senior Management team to understand the different working elements of the agency; the one with Anthea Sully, Head of Public Policy, had stimulated the group’s interest in external public policy and voting.
Each participant had developed their own graphics-recorded profile and identified skills and interests on which to build the work and decide on personal aims to improve skills and build on their strengths. The team had looked at what they would like to influence and how. Sharing their individual profiles had helped the team develop as a group and work out ideas for action.
When I arrived they were putting the final touches to their show in which they were going to present requests to the Senior Management team. Tony Walker, the shyest member of the group, had a particular interest in newspapers and the group used these to explore different ways of presenting their ideas. They included recycling, shredding for the organisation, making fire fuel briquettes and designing paper handbags. The folded newspapers when designed and decorated made robust, attractive accessories’ made robust, attractive accessories. These were displayed and modelled by the team dressed in black or plain colours to set off the bags. David Griffin, a natural star, got into the spirit of the modelling, shimmying along to the music. Other stars included Dan Morrissey, sporting a pink wig, and Andrew Must.
Chief Executive, Brian Hutchinson, and Director of Human Resources and Operations, Tony Pearson joined the catwalk bewigged in luminous pink and yellow hair and ‘fancy dress’. The group judged the winning model as Tony Pearson who was presented with an award-winning handbag by designer Tony Walker.
The graphics recorded their prolific discussions and ideas relating to the different segments of the whole organisation’s work, from which they had drawn out their first ‘hits’. They had selected two areas to feedback to RLO’s senior management team. One was to develop a social enterprise for recycling using some of their ideas for newspaper and recycling. They asked for a small sum for the mould and press to make fuel briquettes. Brian Hutchinson suggested they might like to ask for more, having seen the range of their enterprise ideas.
Influencing
More involvement in influencing staff recruitment, induction and training was the other idea, presented as a new staff induction evaluation form and feedback on practice observations. The scenario they acted out showed a new member of staff joining an established team keen to support the person with learning disability’s interest in going to a fair (he’d heard one was in the town the next evening). The established team said more notice would be needed as that evening was shopping night! The new staff member returned his form and the HR person picked up on this as an area previously reported and the need for some re-training.
Apart from the clear commitment shown by the attendance of the whole of the senior management team to hear service users’ ideas, what was striking was the confident way the group presented their ideas with every member of the service user group having a role which built on their strengths.
This approach built on people’s self-advocacy skills by giving them a good understanding of how the agency worked. It focused on identifying and sharing their skills, interests and needs and using them in their action plan to increase their influence over the agency, both in one-off investments and ongoing involvements.
And everyone had fun!
