Good support
How to read the stories

Good support

Parents and staff supporting people with learning disabilities are often reminded of the importance of encouraging them to make individual choices and decisions on all aspects of their everyday lives. Services may put ‘the right to choose how you live your life’ as their key objective for all service users. But the problem in promoting a blanket policy towards individual choice is that it can be very difficult to be clear about which choices you are referring to.

We all have individual preferences about how we wish to live our lives. Choosing between coffee or tea, the colour of the clothes we wear, our hair style and our friends are not controversial decisions. But other choices may have longer term consequences. It is important to understand when advice and support may be necessary to avoid the wrong choices being made. The individual concerned may not understand the consequences of his or her choice. Sometime the ‘right to choose’ may actually put a vulnerable person at risk and mean that families and other supporters are (with good intentions) failing to exercise a duty of care.

For example, it should never be assumed that neglect of personal care, wearing dirty or inappropriate clothes or poor diet are automatically informed ‘choices’. We all have a responsibility to encourage healthy lifestyles and greater awareness about the importance of personal care. Many young people with learning disabilities now have ambitions to live as independently as possible, to continue education or training after school, to find employment and to have their own home. Because they are more ambitious and wish to be part of their local communities, we have a responsibility to help them make positive choices about all aspects of their lives.

Positive behaviour support

No matter how hard we try to avoid difficult situations, there will be times in our lives when things happen that make us angry or upset or frightened. We might then respond in a way that makes the situation worse – for ourselves and the people around us. We may need to learn how to cope with difficult situations. For example, you may want to learn to deal with disappointments or having to wait for something, or you may want to learn how to tell someone that you want to be left alone, without losing your temper.

Getting the right support

You can make a lot of things better by getting together with your family carers and supporters and working out the best way they can support you. However, you may also need help from a specialist, someone with the right training and experience who can help to develop a set of behaviour support strategies.

How to get specialist help

Social workers and GPs can help you get the support you need. Organisations like the Challenging Behaviour Foundation also offer helpful advice.

What to expect from a specialist

A behaviour support specialist usually starts by finding out more about the difficult situations you have experienced and why you respond in the way you do. This will involve talking and spending time with you and the people close to you. They will then think about ways of making things better. This could mean improving the support you get from family carers and supporters, and helping you find new ways of expressing yourself and coping with difficult situations. The specialist will help you and your supporters learn and practise these new ways of doing things. Finally, over the weeks and months that follow, the specialist will check that things are working better.

Getting the right support

You can make a lot of things better by getting together with your family carers and supporters and working out the best way they can support you. However, you may also need help from a specialist, someone with the right training and experience who can help to develop a set of behaviour support strategies.

How to read the stories

There is no right or wrong way to read the stories.

Some people are not used to reading stories. Start at the beginning and read the story in each picture. Encourage the reader to move through the pages at their own pace.
Encourage the person to tell the story in their own words. You will discover what they think is happening, what they already know, and how they feel. If you are using the pictures to help explain a procedure to someone, you may need to describe or clarify the actions being shown in each picture to help them understand. Try not to challenge the reader(s) or suggest their ideas are wrong.
Some pictures may be more difficult to understand. It can help to prompt the people you are supporting, for example:
• Who do you think that is?
• What is happening?
• How is he or she feeling?
• Do you feel like that? Has it happened to you/ your friend/ your family?
Allow people enough time to follow the pictures at their own pace. Allow time for discussion of each picture.
Some people may benefit from reading the larger story from which the extract has been taken. This will allow them to explore their feelings and experiences in more depth. To buy the complete book, follow the link to the bookshop that appears at the end of the story.