Nationwide leads the way at FitzRoy

Nationwide – a group of people we support from across FitzRoy – came together again to make decisions about FitzRoy.

Nationwide gives the people we support the opportunity to have their say about FitzRoy, get involved in key areas of work,  and discuss what changes they would like to make.

Stephen, who lives in our Birmingham supported living service, has been a Nationwide member since it began over 16 years ago. He said: “Nationwide is great because we get to talk about our views and share our interests. It’s great to meet new people from other FitzRoy services and to get other people’s point of view.

“We all come from different services and have different ideas of how we want them to be run, and this is a great place for us to share those ideas and make a change.”

This time, Nationwide members tasked FitzRoy with creating welcome packs for new residents in their services.

Tom, who we support in Oxfordshire, said:

I like the idea of welcome packs because it will help new people find out what it is like to live in our service, what we enjoy doing and what the staff are like. This is why I like Nationwide – you get to meet people  and share your thoughts.

Justine, who we also support in Oxfordshire, said she enjoys Nationwide because she gets to ‘meet people with similar interests and share stories’.

Nationwide members have created real change in the way FitzRoy is run. From writing the mobile phone policy for our staff, to the creation of our Quality Checker roles, the people we support are integral in the decision making at FitzRoy.

Support worker Veronica supported Graeme and Shirley to attend Nationwide, and said: “Nationwide is a great way for the people we support to have their say. Because of Nationwide, we now have the Quality Checker roles where the people we support visit other services to make sure residents are getting the right care and support for them.

“Decisions made at Nationwide have also meant that people we support like Shirley are involved in the interview process for our staff – the forum have been heavily involved in the recruitment of a lot of people, including some of our directors and our Chief Executive. It’s brilliant – and the more people that attend, the more ideas are shared.”

Jan, quality manager at FitzRoy said: “Nationwide, as always, was brilliant. We had people we support attend from every region, and it was so great to see both regular faces and new people who had never been to Nationwide before.

“Nationwide is such an important forum, and has seen some real change made in the way we work at FitzRoy. It is vital that we have meaningful ways to enable the people we support to have a voice and to be heard. Their input is so important – everything we do, every strategy, every policy is so that we can provide a better service to them and Nationwide helps us ensure we keep their experiences at the centre of what we are doing. They keep us on track, and remind us of things we may have overlooked if we hadn’t involved them.”