We recognise that life in a communal setting and the need to accept help with personal tasks are inherently invasive of a service user's ability to enjoy the pleasure of being alone and undisturbed. We therefore strive to retain as much privacy as possible for our service users in the following ways.
- Giving help in intimate situations as discreetly as possible.
- Helping service users to furnish and equip their rooms in their own style and to use them as much as they wish for leisure, meals and entertaining.
- Offering a range of locations around the home for service users to be alone or with selected others.
- Guaranteeing service users' privacy when using the telephone, opening and reading post and communicating with friends, relatives or advisors.
- Ensuring the confidentiality of information the home holds about service users.
We strive to preserve respect for our service users' intrinsic value in the following ways.
- Treating each service user as a special and valued individual.
- Helping service users to present themselves to others as they would wish through their own clothing, their personal appearance and their grooming preferences.
- Offering a range of activities which enables each service user to express themselves as a unique individual.
- Our commitment to ensuring that the services that we provide to each service user are appropriate for their individual needs, taking account of their abilities, physical functioning, mobility and communication skills.
- Compensating where appropriate for the effects of disabilities which service users may experience in their communication, physical functioning, mobility or appearance.
We are aware that our service users have given up a good deal of their independence in entering a group living situation. We regard it as all the more important to foster our service users' remaining opportunities to think and act without reference to another person in the following ways.
- Providing as tactfully as possible human or technical assistance when it is needed.
- Maximising the abilities our service users retain for self-care, for independent interaction with others, and for carrying out the tasks of daily living unaided.
- Helping service users take reasonable and fully thought-out risks.
- Promoting possibilities for service users to establish and retain contacts beyond the home.
- Using any form of restraint on service users only in situations of urgency when it is essential for their own safety or the safety of others.
- Encouraging service users to access and contribute to the records of their own care.
We aim to provide an environment and structure of support which responds to the need for security in the following ways.
- Offering assistance with tasks and in situations that service users would otherwise find difficult or present a risk to their safety.
- Protecting service users from all forms of abuse and from all possible abusers.
- Providing readily accessible channels for dealing with complaints by service users.
- Creating an atmosphere in the home which service users experience as open, positive and inclusive.
We support service users in exercising their rights as citizens, and therefore work to maintain opportunities for full participation in the following ways.
- Ensuring that service users have the opportunity to vote in elections and to brief themselves fully on the democratic options.
- Preserving for service users full and equal access to all elements of the National Health Service.
- Helping service users to claim all appropriate benefits and social services.
- Assisting service users' access to public services such as libraries, further education and lifelong learning.
of options in all aspects of their lives in the following ways.
- Providing meals which enable service users as far as possible to decide for themselves where, when and with whom they consume food and drink of their choice.
- Offering service users a wide range of leisure activities from which to choose.
- Enabling service users to manage their own time and not be dictated to by set communal timetables.
- Always treating service users as individuals rather than a homogeneous group.
- Retaining maximum flexibility in the routines of the daily life of the home.
We want to help our service users to realise personal aspirations and abilities in all aspects of their lives. We seek to assist this in the following ways.
- Informing ourselves as fully as each service user wishes about their individual histories and characteristics.
- Providing a range of leisure and recreational activities to suit the tastes and abilities of all service users, and to stimulate participation.
- Responding appropriately to the personal, intellectual, artistic and spiritual values and practices of every service user.
- Respecting our service users' religious, ethnic and cultural diversity.
- Supporting service users to maintain existing contacts and to make new friendships and relationships if they wish.
- A commitment to listen and attend promptly to any service user's desire to communicate at whatever level.
We aim to demonstrate that we welcome and celebrate the diversity of people in our community and in this home. We try to do this in the following ways.
- Positively communicating to our service users that their diverse backgrounds enhance the life of the home.
- Respecting and providing for the ethnic, cultural and religious practices of service users.
- Outlawing negatively discriminatory behaviour by staff and others.
- Accommodating individual differences without censure.
- Helping service users to celebrate events, anniversaries and festivals which are important to them.
