Community Lives Consortium

Active Support Update 2007 - Video - Text

Hi, I am Phil MacFarlane Contract Manager for Network 7.

Hi My name is Renee Willis and I am the Contract Manager for Network3.

Phil MacFarlane

Following on from last year's Annual General Meeting we would like to update you on the progress of Active Support for this year.

Most of us if not all in attendance at the AGM have a vested interest in the Consortium, either as a person in receipt of the service or as the people that are actually helping to deliver the service that people are purchasing.

The Consortium exists to support people to enhance these skills and to help them participate in their everyday management of their affairs, financial management, meal preparation, Personal Care and so on.

Equally as important for us as a provider is how the monitoring helps us to identify how we need to modify and progress with a good service to ensure that the skills on the people that we support are enhanced in the best possible way. 

People who are supported by the Consortium are supported in a variety of ways to have their say. Particularly for example when there are issues between staff and the people they support. Where we are now gaining ground with people having more say and a greater participation in actually employing the people that support them, this is somewhere where the Consortium, although techniques are still in their infancy if you like, they are becoming far more widely used and we are well on the way to becoming very progressive in this area.

More conventional ways on the passing on of this scale can be seen at many locations throughout the Consortium and this is where staff are involved in the support of people in the management of their everyday affairs, such as their management of their home, Finances and everyday things that affect the choices of the lives that people lead.

This area of support known commonly as Active Support, is an area where the Consortium has invested considerable resources in a bid to enhance the skills and ultimately the lives of the people we support.

Renee Willis

We have now developed a Personal Support Audit which was mentioned in last year's AGM as a Field Audit. This is a tool that measures the effectiveness of Active Support and is done by our Team Co-ordinators.

The Team Co-ordinators go into the schemes and check through the paperwork to make sure that the plans and necessary risk assessments are in place. 

They also Audit can also observe the staff, interacting with Service Users doing tasks and provide feedback for this task that has been done.

We are now starting also to use Person Centred Planning to help people to choose activities and skills that they would like to further build on or new skills that they would like to start. This then translates into the Active Support paperwork, Teaching Plans, Support Plans, Risk Assessments ifrequired, to give us a basis to support the Service Users and indiviudals for particular needs.

THE END