WORK IN PROGRESS
Current projects at VIA
Current work includes -
- Supporting the participation of housing tenants who have learning difficultes.
As a major VIA project, staff in two areas of the UK are supporting the development of tenant participation, and the lessons will also be used to produce a video aimed at people with learning difficulties.
- Developing VIA in Scotland.
VIA now has a worker - Stella Morris - based in Scotland, and working for better policies and services north of the border.
- Monitoring hospital resettlement.
VIA's recent research (see publications) into the changing pattern of services resulting from a reorganisation of the UK health service showed up worrying trends in the movement of people from the old mental handicap hospitals. We continue to monitor, advise, and lobby.
- Measuring service quality by the quality of people's lives.
Too much quality assurance is based on material standards - such as the carpet on the bedroom floors - or on the internal processes of the service agency. What's important is whether the service helps people to have good lives as full citizens - and VIA is developing a new monitoring method based on that principle. The new method, now at an early stage of field-testing, has been developed by Steve Dowson.
- NEW PROJECT: Services for older people with learning difficulties.
This is a joint project wih the (UK) Centre for Policy on Ageing, supported by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It will study existing services and future plans for older people with learning difficulties, and will seek out the views of services users, their relatives, friends and advocates as well as service workers and other professionals.
Where no specific contact is given, more details can be obtained from VIA national office.
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Page last updated 20/11/95