Projects and Initiatives

We are currently working in Partnership with QUIP (Kvalita v praxi dnes) in Prague and with Nadácia Krajina harmónie a Foundation based in Zilina, North East Slovakia.

Together we are assisting people who have learning difficulties to travel, meet with each other and explore the quality of services in different countries.  We are all learning and discovering more about ourselves and we are already exploring some great ideas from our partners. This work is enabled through a European Union Grundtvig Grant.

In March 2011, we had the first of our exchanges in Prague and we also contributed to a conference there on deinsitutionalisation. We learnt about life in different countries and by doing so we all gained a new perspective and clarified our own views about what happens in our own localities too. The emerging more personalised approach in European social care was part of the debate and there was a strong emphasis on rights, control and mutual support. We are currently making a video presentation to summarise the initial visits and our collective learning.

This is the second Inclusion Institute will be held at Seamill Hydro in Ayrshire from 20th to 22nd September. It is being organised by Inspiring Inclusion in association with Diversity Matters and Altrum.

During the 3 days of this event we will be bringing together a unique group of thinkers and ‘doers’ to create a learning community. There will be daily keynote presentations, workshops led by the presenters and facilitators and time in the evenings for reflection, networking and more learning.

We don't think of this as just an event, but as an opportunity for key activists and policymakers and practioners to come together and develop collaborative ideas on how to progress inclusion in Scotland. Topics include, Citizen Advocacy and Intentional Invitation, Support brokerage, Circles of Support, Person Centred Planning,
Creating Community Connections, Family and Individual Leadership, Inclusive Education Employment, Individual Budgets and Self Directed Support and Asset Based Community Development.

To find our more and to a book a place, link to our partners at Inspiring Inclusion

Our newest project aims to work on the learning process around personalisation. We are working with a broad coalition of partners to design new awards in social care that will creatively bring together people who use services, families, community members, workers and other professionals into a co-productive learning process.

This is part of our vision for Inclusive Life in Scotland. In the past, educational programmes and institutions have taken people out and away from society or the workplace in order to learn but this doesnt make sense any more when we are moving to more personalised social care. Instead we need to all learn together. More info to follow soon!

This is a new partnership with friends from Switzerland and the USA who have pioneered an approach focussed on teachers and pupils who are more challenging.

Teachers Empowered is sustained by a vision that seeks to make a lasting contribution to the venerable and honorable vocation of teaching: We want to live in a world in which positions are clearly differentiated and clearly occupied in order to provide stronger support for a diversity of cultural and individual life styles. Such a world needs strong personalities and strong teachers.

Using Process Work (also known as process-oriented psychology) as a methodological framework, the program provides an introduction to specific attitudes, techniques, and practical exercises that inspire and empower teachers to work with the tensions and demands they face on a daily basis. The feedback of recent program participants shows that Teachers Empowered makes a significant contribution to helping teachers gain a new perspective on their profession as well as on their day-today challenges.

The program is supported by an international network and an interactive learning and support platform (www.starke-lehrkraefte.net). whose purpose is to restore the appreciation and respect to this profession that it deserves. It is a resource rich model finding ways to acknowledge and use the capacities and gifts or teachers and pupils together.

This year (2011) we are evaluating two organisations in Scotland that provide social care and we are finishing an evaluation of an Advocacy organisation too. We have evaluated ten different supported living services in the U.K. so far (see the articles in the resources pages of this site for more information) and we are now co-ordinating an Altrum project to develop evaluation processes that can involve everyone, including people who use services, in commenting upon and advising on service improvements. 

We wanted to develop an Evaluation Process that would explore quality in the newer more personalised services, something that could be easily used and understood by everyone. The Five Dimensions Evaluation Process was the result.

It been developed to be used by mixed teams; people who are fascinated by how services work – people who use services, carers, professionals are all team members.

We believe that organisations have patterns and routines that are difficult to see when they are lived from the inside, year after year. Yet these patterns may be the reason why things stay the same and why the same problems keep coming back. This means it's hard to identify what is really happening unless there is a clear feedback process.

Organisational change often fails because it doesn't address the broader social, historical and cultural issues that affect people who use social care services.

Using the Five Dimensions approach we explore the patterns and processes in the delivery of a service that contribute to unique, empowering support and right relationships- we provide a reflective process to help improve services, raising awareness about belief systems and how things are happening?

For more information about the Five Dimensions watch a short video here

And for information on our evaluation work involving people who use services in the process see here.