Leroy's diary

My diary about training peer advocates for the Involve Me project

I have been involved in training self advocates to become peer advocates as part of the Involve Me project.

The Involve me project is about how to involve people with Profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) in decision making and it is run by Mencap and BILD. It is being funded by the Renton Foundation. You can find out more about the project on the Mencap website.

The Involve me project is showing how different creative approaches can be used to involve people with PMLD in decision making. There are 4 sites involved in the project. One of the sites is the ‘Getting to Know You’ site. It is about how peer advocacy can be used to involve people with PMLD in the decisions made about their lives.

What is Getting to Know You (peer advocacy)?
It is about self-advocates with a learning disability getting to know, and speaking up for, the rights of people with PMLD and saying what is important to them. Find out more on the Mencap website.

Training self-advocates at the Getting to Know You site which is at Hammersmith and Fulham Mencap

I have been co-training 7 people with a learning disability from Hammersmith and Fulham Mencap to become peer advocates like I already am. It is good because Hammersmith and Fulham Mencap have some funding which means they are able to pay the peer advocates. I think that is a good step in the right direction because often, like citizen advocates, peer advocates are volunteers and don’t get paid.

Week 1

In the first week of training that I was there we played a game called ‘people’s bingo’ where we had 6 boxes on a sheet of paper, with things like ‘supports Arsenal’, ‘wears white socks’. We had to go to different people in the group and find out things about them and see if we could find someone who matched what was written in the box. We could then put the person’s name next to that box.

In the afternoon I did a presentation to them on the Getting To Know You project and I also showed them some things which are important to me. At the end I gave them some homework. It was that they had to get together 5 things which are important to them just like I had done and bring them in the next week.  

Week 2

The first thing that we did was to go around the room to see what 5 things the other people had brought in and we had to guess what the five things meant to them. One guy had a table tennis bat with him which meant that he liked table tennis and he is a table tennis coach. We then had a debate about what peer advocacy is.

Week 3

I did not attend week 3.

Week 4

As part of the Involve Me project each site has been a given a communication toolkit. This is to encourage staff to try different ways of communicating with people with PMLD. We had a guy called Chris come in to tell us about some of the different communication tools that can be used like Big Macs. Find out more about the communication toolkits that the sites have been given.

After the break we had a warm up game called ‘what is important to me?’ – about what is important to people with profound and multiple learning disabilities. We then had a debate about the profiles being put together of people taking part in the project and what information they should have in them.

Most of us then took part in some filming with a guy called Steve from the Paddington Arts. He is doing the filming for the Involve Me project. At the end resources will be produced to help other people involve people with PMLD in decision making and one of these will be a DVD.

Then we had lunch with some people from the Renton Foundation who funded the involve project.

Then the peer advocates were presented with their certificates which showed they had taken part in this training.

It was good to spend time with people who I know are going to become good peer advocates.