Mencap, the UK’s leading charity for learning disability, is partnering with Climb Any Mountain to accelerate change in South Africa.
Mencap is incredibly excited about our mission to spark a huge and ambitious shift in the way services are provided for people with intellectual disability in South Africa. They are keen to use their knowledge and experience, which have been built over 30 years of supporting people with an intellectual disability.
Director of Quality at Mencap, Eileen Downey says, “This is hugely exciting because we have the chance to use our knowledge to support Kim and her colleagues to transform the lives of many people with a learning disability who are currently unable to reach their full potential. It is the start of a journey with Climb Any Mountain and we look forward to developing our partnership with them.”
Mencap’s ‘What Matters Most’ framework is focussed around helping people to improve their quality of life – and this resonated with us and what we are aspiring to achieve through service development in South Africa. The Mencap Quality team, led by Eileen Downey, are sharing their best practice tools and frameworks with Climb Any Mountain to begin this shift in service delivery.
We are starting with creating an ‘About Me’ profile for every person at the Pietermaritzburg Mental Health Society to ensure that it is the person, their desires and needs that inform how the service is provided and not the person having to fit into a generic and group oriented model of care. This encourages and compels the support team to see the individual as a person with unique qualities and gifts, rather than someone who just has needs to be met.
In the next few months, we will be funding two Mencap staff to go to South Africa and support the staff at the Pietermaritzburg Mental Health Society to run a quality audit. This will provide an essential foundation from which they will be able to identify strengths, weaknesses and opportunities to develop an innovative, community focussed and person centred model of care.
