The
Social Inclusion Planner. It's new, it's innovative,
and it's available here
for download - free!
Social Inclusion
means that everyone belongs, everyone can join in as equals.
People get a fair share of opportunities. This includes every aspect
of life -
A fair
chance of getting a job, an education and a home
Fair
access to help from health and social services
To be treated
as equal to everyone else in leisure activities.
Getting the
support you need to join in.
For years the learning disability and
mental health system has offered support to people on condition
that they are separated from ordinary life. People have gone
to special schools instead of ordinary schools and then transfer
to special workshops and day centres instead of ordinary jobs
and social lives. From housing to healthcare, from birth to
death, people have found themselves in special, segregated places.
As a result, society
has forgotten how to include everyone. Prejudice, discrimination
and abuse have become commonplace. Communities have pushed some
members out and become poorer, meaner places. Some people with
mental health issues or learning disabilities have got to the
point where they only feel safe in separate, 'special' settings.
This has to change, and this means that we all have to change.
This is the challenge of social inclusion. The National Development
Team works with people at risk of exclusion, health and social
services and community organisations to fight exclusion and
encourage inclusion.
The NDT offers a range of resources and services to help services
and communities to increase social inclusion. Some of these
are outlined or available directly on other pages on this site.
These are summarised below, with links for further details.
Summary
of NDT resources and services:
The
NDT can provide a programme
of training on social inclusion. It helps people
to think differently, work differently and offer
more opportunities and appropriate support to people.
Day Centre staff, community teams and housing support
workers have been retrained to work for inclusion
rather than exclusion. The programme strengthens
values, beliefs, knowledge and skills.
The
NDT also provides consultancy
to service organisations, and assists in the review
of local services. Social inclusion, if not the
specific focus of such work, will almost certainly
be one of the key goals and measures of success
in service delivery.
One
of our Emerging Themes
papers explores what social inclusion implies for
the way that specialist and mainstream agencies
work together.
Another
Emerging Themes
paper looks at some common mistakes and misunderstandings
in supporting social inclusion -
'Accidents at the Inclusion Traffic Lights'.
The NDT has developed a number
of ways to check whether the good intentions of
staff in supporting social inclusion are working.
The quality of Person-Centred
Planning is vital. We have also offered some
comparisons with the general population in the
Day Service Modernisation Toolkit.
The
Web - click for large graphic
A third
approach that we are developing, in partnership
with a number of local services, is the 'Inclusion
Web' (see diagram/link, right). If you want to find
out more about using this to monitor and evaluate
your service, please contact Peter Bates at pbates@ndt.org.uk.
The Social
Inclusion Planner is an innovative software
package that supports work to promote inclusion
by offering a database of inclusion activities
that can be used to build plans for inclusion
and monitor their effectiveness. It's available
for download, free of charge
The NDT is registered in England No.
27566R
[S]
Last
updated 3rd May 2007 Comments
on the site are welcomed.
