How and why is access achieved? Part 2

Flexibility

• Access can be helped by services that offer ‘individual, tailor-made support’ and that are based on knowing the person with learning difficulty really well.


• Access can be helped by providing what is called an “umbrella” of support, where “small steps at a time” are taken so that it is not so far to fall.


• Access can be helped when everyone communicates in the way the person with learning difficulty prefers (for example using Makaton or a symbols board).


• Access can be helped when staff from different services (for example health and social services) work together.

High expectations and positive attitudes

• We need to believe in what people with learning disabilities can do- their capacities and their capabilities.


• We need to do positive assessments, where we start with what people can do and not that they cannot do.
  
  
  

  "I will find something else [job]. I am not a failure. I am a determined person" [Mathew Smith]