Coming together to share ideas and fun to celebrate Dignity Action Day in Surrey

Company news

Feb 01, 2013

People with learning disabilities, from across Surrey will be gathering in Wallington to celebrate national Dignity Action Day on Friday 1^st February and they will be telling professional carers what dignity means to them and discussing how this is promoted in the services they use.

Around 40 people using Care UK’s 15 residential services for people with learning disabilities in the area have been invited to gather together at a Wallington hotel to share their ideas about what dignity means to them and how they would like it to affect the services they use.

Daniela Popescu, who manages services in Normandy and Ripley, said: “All the teams are committed to promoting dignity and the best way for us to do that is to understand what dignity means to the people we support.”

The people using the residential services are working on ways of presenting their opinions and they will be given support to discuss where their personal development is now and where they want it to be. Daniela said: “People will be talking through their ideas and, for those who have communication problems the teams will have worked with them to capture their ideas in a variety of ways such as scrapbooks, games, pictures and posters.”

During the session the teams hope to capture more ideas about dignity by creating a dignity tree which will be filled with coloured leaves on which the people attending will have written what dignity means to them.

Daniela said: “We will use what they tell us in a variety of ways from giving new ideas to talk about as we help people create their personal care plan to using what they tell us is important in our own planning and in our recruitment and training of new team members.

“We will also take what we learn from the day into our regular meetings with the people who live in the supported service and the subject of dignity will be on the agenda for each meeting from now on.”

The other services taking part in the event on Friday 1^st February are all based in Surrey and come from Bisley, Wallington, Normandy, Carshalton, Ripley and Sutton