Mainstay Trust Ltd works with people with learning and physical disabilities and we based our ‘What matters to you?’ day around service user involvement and participation. Support workers spent time with the service users to find out what mattered to them and prepared feedback forms which were shared and views were listened to.
Case study by Scott Ritchie
Our art group designed and displayed a lot of creative art work relating to ‘What matters to you?’ day. We also held a subgroup meeting with the people we support prior to the day to find out what things they would like to achieve. The group decided that they would like to learn more life skills and we agreed that on 6 June 2018, for ‘What matters to you?’ day, we would put on courses about ‘health and safety fire evacuation in the hub’ and ‘food hygiene’. The people we support would receive a certificate of attendance and this was facilitated by our training officer. These courses were very well received. We also had suggestion boxes for people to express their views about things they would like to see happen in the future.
We had information stalls, and people attended from Glasgow Eagles Sports Opportunities and Kelvingrove Tennis Club as we were teaching the people we support about the ‘Keys to Life’. This focused on the promotion of healthy living, choice and control – moving people towards realising their own potential with the correct level of support. It also included active citizenship where people with learning disabilities are supported to participate in all aspects of community and society.
As a result of ‘What matters to you?’ day, we were able to use this as a platform to show more people that this is a good forum to express their views. This has enabled a variety of different activities, chosen by the people we support, such as:
- charity football match between staff and the people we support, now known as Mainstay Madrid
- sponsored walk at Bellahouston Park
- day trip to Strathclyde Park
The people we support and staff know more about what’s on in Glasgow due to our ‘What’s on’ station that has been set up which was a product of ‘What matters to you?’ conversations.
We also gathered feedback forms from our staff and will now take these to our next management meeting and put people’s suggestions into achievable outcomes to help make the staff teams feel more valued and listened to.
Everyone was fully involved in all aspects of the day which made it special to them as their voices were heard and respected – this was very important to us due to the people we support being a very vulnerable group. New life skills were learned and as some of these individuals do not have 24 hour support, these promote their independent living skills which will keep them safer.
It has opened up more doors and opportunities for the people we support by asking the question ‘What matters to you?’ This can be someone trying a new activity, course, experience or for some of the more complex people we support it can be a change as subtle having the confidence to mix with other individuals to improve their confidence and self-esteem and meeting other people can help develop peer groups and social inclusion.
The day was a fantastic success with many people we support meeting new people, trying new things, learning about what’s on in Glasgow and gaining new life skills. This was constructed in a person-centred way with the views of the people we support at the heart of what we were doing on the day. As a person-centred provider we always promote being an active listener and each person’s views are respected and promoted as we aim to deliver on our mission statement of helping people achieve the best possible day – ‘plan your day with Mainstay’.