This page is designed to answer the following questions:
- 3.3 Foster active participation of individuals (Level 5 Diploma in Leadership and Management for Adult Care, Person-centred Practice for Positive Outcomes)
NOTE: This page has been quality assured for 2023 as per our Quality Assurance policy.
Active participation is an approach that promotes the engagement and involvement of an individual with their care and support needs. For this assessment criterion, you will be required to implement ways of working that ensure individuals are able to use, develop, extend or relearn skills for daily activities and achievement of positive outcomes.
Ways of working that promote active participation ensure that individuals are no longer passive recipients of care and support services but are actively engaged in both the planning and delivery. This approach promotes independence because it enables individuals to learn, develop or relearn skills and prevents the loss of skills from lack of use.
As well as promoting an individual’s autonomy, it can also increase their confidence and self-esteem and contribute to their overall well-being.
As a manager, you should ensure that policies and procedures are in place to support active participation. This will include the care planning process and systems must be in place to ensure that the service user is able to contribute as much as possible. This may mean arranging for an independent advocate, involving family members or working with other health and social care professionals.
Risk assessment processes will also be needed to ensure that service users remain as safe as possible whilst performing activities.
There should also be processes in place to monitor the use of active participation in day-to-day practice to ensure that individuals are able to participate as much as possible. This will be part of your organisation’s quality assurance and can help to highlight areas for improvement.
A theoretical model for participation that you may wish to use was put forward by Wilcox in ‘The Guide to Effective Participation‘ (1994). As well as the theoretical model, there is also information about how to implement this in practice as well as tips to ensure effective participation.