Active Support: Getting it Working Within an Organisation

Abstract

This article describes the implementation of ‘active support’ in United Response, a national voluntary organisation which provides services to people with learning disabilities. The learning process in implementing active support demonstrates that effective leadership by service managers and area managers is very important. It is also important to recognise the scale of change when introducing active support, and that managers may have difficulty with being given a very specific practice focus which they are required to model for other staff members. Leadership, perseverance and coaching may be necessary to convince some service staff that the quality of their service could be improved by the introduction of active support.