People with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) are some of the most excluded in society. The recent guidance from the Department of Health (Raising our sights) suggested that services could do much better in involving people with PMLD in decision making.
The Involve Me project (a partnership between the Renton Foundation, Mencap and BILD) worked with four sites, using different creative approaches to involvement.
The project set out to discover the common messages about what works when getting people with profound and multiple disabilities more involved. The project found that, there were a number of consistent messages about how to involve people. These included, sharing interests, having fun, interaction and staff support.
The project identified 8 key messages about involvement:
• Know the person really well
• Take lots of time
• Don’t make assumptions
• Be responsive to the person
• Be creative and try out new ideas
• Learn from what the person ‘tells’ you
• Act on what you learn
• Help the person recall and share things about their life
You can download the full report here as a pdf
Read the project evaluation as a pdf
The Involve me website with video clips and information
Does anyone know how to get the DVD linked to this Involve Me report. It looks like it could be a good training tool ?
Hi Kellie, there are some clips on the mencap website (www.mencap.org.uk) but you can order the DVD from them by emailing involveme@mencap.org.uk, best wishes
john
This research could have come from the Institute of the Blindingly Obvious.
Parents of adults with PMLD could have given you this advice for free. When all this research reaches the people with all the power, i.e. local authorities, it will conveniently be forgotten. They will plead poverty as they always do.
i agree trouble is to many people dont know this, dont think it applys to people with p.m.l.d.
or dont whant to say it. know we have an indepentant report saying what we know but need to bake up when trying to get support.