Presence to Contribution

The Children and Families Act and the Care Act both focus on the importance of children, young people and adults with disabilities and additional needs being part of their communities. For many people social isolation is an issue. It is important to support people to do the things they want to do and part of this is to support them to be part of their communities, whatever that means for them.

This tool is a way of having a conversation with someone to find ways to enable them to be part of their community. It enables you to record what the person is interested in (or take this from their one-page profile), what it means to be present for an activity and what they could do to contribute to it more fully. It asks people to think about the places that are important to them, where they go now and how they can develop these interests further. This helps us to think about possibilities in the future and plan actions to make positive change, supporting someone to be a contributing member of their community.

It provides a structure to think about what a person does on a day-to-day basis, so that we can see opportunities for them to make new connections, meet new people and contribute to the community.

The starting point can be to use the tool to include the people in their planning meetings. Often young people do not attend their planning and review meetings and this is a lost opportunity. If the young person is not present it is hard to work out how to move on to them having presence, actively participating, gaining opportunities to connect and then contributing. This tool provides the framework to support people to be more involved in the things they enjoy.