What does a leader look like: advice and experience from people with learning disabilities

                                   

What does a leader look like according to TRAC?

  

 

Approachable; friendly, helpful, confident and believes in themselves but not arrogant

A leader encourages others, they motivate and they are flexible they don’t steal people’s ideas

People believe in a leader, they talk, explain and give advice, they don’t think they know everything

Their voice is quiet so people listen to them they are not manipulated by others

They have positive, happy, good body language they don’t swear, that’s unprofessional

They act as a coach and show you where to go they don’t turn a blind eye and they aren’t distracted by their mobile phone

A leader speaks up when something is wrong they aren’t frightened to speak up

A leader is flexible, they don’t get stuck on one thing and they will change their opinion

A leader is respected and trusted they acknowledge their mistakes, they don’t dismiss things

They work together with people to find solutions they aren’t frightened to ask questions

We all agreed that it is not easy to be a leader!

Reviewing ground rules and planning teaching

TRAC met in January and we agreed that this blog would summarise what we talked about in our meeting.
At the meeting we trialled a new way of making sure that everybody is heard.  This was because at our last meeting some people felt that there were people taking over and not everybody was getting time to talk.  Meaningful inclusion and communication is so important to us and revisiting ground rules has helped us to think about this.

We had a new member Andrew with us who chaired the meeting and we used a number of A4 size easy read symbols 'I want to be heard' on the desk in front of members. 

One of our group members explained that there are some sound boxes that we could use to trial being heard.  We decided that next time we meet we will use these and then vote about which TRAC members prefer.

Professor Ruth Northway came to talk to the group about being involved in a piece of research, we talked about exercise and how people with learning disabilities might be motivated to exercise but might not have the knowledge about how or where they can exercise.

Or they may want to exercise and know how important it is but might not have the equipment and money to get involved.  TRAC are really excited about this piece of work.

In the meeting Ben Pitcher came to talk to us about being involved in teaching advanced practitioners, Ben would like TRAC to come and talk about what is important for other people to know when communicating and assessing people with learning disabilities.  We talked a lot about medication, consultations and how important it is to make reasonable adjustments under the Equality Act (2010), something that was really important was having extra time and having a key person who can be there to explain and help to ask more questions.