Great Interactions

I thought I would tell you about an exciting piece of work in East Lancashire.

MacIntyre’s PCP project champions Person Centred Approaches across East Lancashire. An important part of what we do is to monitor the quality of people’s plans. As you know the quality of a plan is not judged by the mere fact that someone has a plan or how good it looks but rather on the quality of the day to day support (interactions) someone experiences and the outcomes they achieve. Person Centred approaches and Great Interactions are not separate activities but are intertwined and reliant on each other.

This work is being carried forward by the Quality group. The group’s members are people who have experience of receiving services and are representatives of East Lancashire’s self advocacy group ELSUN and MacIntyre’s PCP coordinators.

When the coordinators joined MacIntyre they were inducted in Great Interactions and since have applied this in all of their work. They are now using their knowledge and skills to train the reps ensuring that they are truly involved, contribute to and lead the work of the group.

The group themselves are then supported to use the facilitation skills when they visit people at their services

• to gather their views and experiences of Person centred approaches
• to find evidence of Great Interactions in the way people are supported through the planning process and their day to day support.
• to act as role models

What makes this so exciting is that Great Interactions is integral to all parts of the process, and provides the means to get a true picture of the quality of person centred approaches from the view point of the people themselves. This information will help us to understand what is and isn’t working enabling us to focus our efforts to ensure that positive changes happen for all.

Catherine Farrell

Person Centered Approaches Advisor