Essential skills training - Sara Canham

🪴Growing ourselves to grow others 🪴

Today, we’re celebrating the fantastic achievement of our South Care Coordinator, Robyn. 🤩

Over the past 18 months, Robyn has worked incredibly hard to complete her Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Adult Care.

💚Robyn shared:
“I have been undertaking a Level 5 qualification to get the equivalent of a foundation degree. Never was this the education I thought I’d achieve. While doing it I went through some poor health, many medical appointments and even worse mental health. I completed this alongside these challenges, all while working full time in a job I love and getting a promotion. I am so proud of myself and the journey it’s taken to get it, but I’ve had some amazing support along the way. Thank you also to my tutor Sara for her support and guidance.”

Please join us in congratulating Robyn on completing her Level 5 — what an amazing achievement! 👏🎉

Leading Lives
Essential skills training - Sara Canham

Why do we so often become curious only after someone with an intellectual or developmental disability has reached breaking point?

We remind ourselves that challenging behavior is communication but by then, a wall has been damaged, someone has been hurt, or a relationship has been strained. Perhaps the better question isn't, "What is this behavior telling us?" but, "What did we miss before it became necessary?"

People deserve to be understood long before distress becomes impossible to ignore. When we take the time to know the person, notice the quieter signs, and build lives filled with purpose, belonging, and genuine relationships, challenging behavior often becomes less necessary.

If you'd like to explore these ideas further, Open Future Learning has a range of learning modules that look at understanding behavior through a person-centred lens rather than simply managing it.

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ID: Image shows someone sat leaning against a wall looking isolated. Text reads: "All behavior is communication." After someone puts a hole in the wall. Do: Ask why someone had to rely on challenging behavior before we understood something wasn't right.

Another City & Guilds External verifier inspection, and another clean bill of health 🎉

Great celebration of 18 yrs of providing vocational, qualifications to managers and staff across a wide range of workplace across Essex and Suffolk.
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See the person!

Over the past several weeks, this message has travelled farther than we imagined. Our PSA on people with developmental disabilities and shared humanity has generated tens of thousands of online views and millions of impressions through CTV and Astral Media, with shares from organizations across Canada and around the world. At its heart is a simple truth: we’re more alike than different. Thank you to everyone for helping keep this conversation going. Watch it again. #inclusionmatters #seethepersonnotthelabel

Possibilities are endless, push for what you want to achieve …

Diagnosis is not destination. There is a future full of possibility. When we were born, I’m sure most of our families had great fear, worry, and concern for what our future would hold. “I wonder if she/he will walk?” “I wonder if she/he will learn to read or write?” “How will society treat them?” These are understandable, questions, full of truth, but we have to remember to not let those fears and outdated predictions cloud the opportunities we give our children to succeed. And cloud vision for a different future. Will it take longer? Most likely... Will it be an easy road? Nothing worth doing requires little effort and for many of us with disabilities it requires much more effort, but without that extra, we will never know the full potential of their lives and what they are capable of achieving. And now we are showing that we are achieving and growing personally like never before. We are doing things society never expected us to do. And we are excited for the next generation and where they are headed. There are so many more stories out there that would have made this video incredibly long. We are sorry if you were not included- but know we see you. Watch Us! #downsyndrome

For people with developmental and intellectual disabilities too often, “lacks capacity” really means “wasn't given a fair chance.” Capacity is not measured by how quickly someone understands an explanation that was rushed, full of jargon, or delivered only once. People with intellectual disabilities have the right to information presented in ways that make sense to them, with time to ask questions and support to understand. Before deciding that someone cannot make a complex decision, we should first ask whether we have done a good enough job of explaining it.

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ID: Text reads: People with intellectual disabilities are often judged to lack capacity without proper support to understand. Image shows a professional-looking person is talking to a support worker. The speech bubble reads: “Tom lacks capacity to make complex decisions.” Person with intellectual disability with a thought bubble: You explained it once. Badly.