The pivotal person in the residents care is their Key Worker. Each person is nominated a Key Worker within two weeks of their arrival; this allows us time to see their personal preferences and bonds with staff members ensuring a suitable Key Worker is selected. The Key Worker’s play an important role in developing individualised care for their key person. The Key Worker will be the main contact for parents or carers, as well as professionals. They act as an advocate for the resident, as well as their families, and will attend reviews and meetings, as well as helping them to understand outcomes of meetings. This may be by putting the information into an easy read format or having a one to one discussion. We encourage residents to engage in as many offsite community activities as possible, these can be purely social for example attending discos and youth club or they can be used to enhance learning opportunities such as work placements at a local farm or attending local Further Education College. We have two vehicles to allow trips far and wide. Activities are tailored to the individual, so the list is literally endless and can include cinema, discos, bike rides, shopping in local cities, Football matches, pottery, swimming, trampolining, gym, etc. We also ensure residents have access to a holiday each year; from Butlins to Center Parcs, Camping to 5* luxury hotel, all depending on individual choice (and of course budget). We are committed to ensuring that no one is stopped from experiencing and enjoying their life because of barriers their disability may put in their way. Our risk assessment policy aims to enable not restrict.

Residents are diagnosed with varying disabilities, they have significant differences in cognitive ability and communicate in different ways. Every person referred to live at Fairfield House display some challenging behaviour. This is our specialism and is what is at the centre of everything we do. All forms of behaviour are seen as some form of communication. As a team of specialists we aim to give the young adult a more appropriate way of communicating. The house uses a positive approach to promote positive behaviour. Our physical intervention technique is called NAPPI (non-abusive physical and psychological intervention) Our aim is to reduce and eliminate the need to use physical intervention wherever possible. All staff are fully trained in NAPPI. Proactive and preventative approaches are always used in dealing with problematic behaviours, but at the same time we challenge the person to ensure they are fulfilling their potential. NAPPI helps us to develop approaches to manage challenging behaviour in a reactive way to keep the individual and others safe from immediate harm. It also helps us to manage the positive aspects of a person’s life and reduce challenging behaviours by providing enrichment across three main categories; Caring Community, Productivity and High Quality Relaxation.

Support staff are trained to use various approaches, systems and strategies including PECS and Makaton to support, communicate with and develop each young adult. It is essential the people we care for have a voice and have a say in how the home is run. Their Key Worker has an essential role in acting as their advocate and ensuring their views are made known. In addition to this our Shift Leaders also organise regular house meetings to ensure residents voices are heard.

When a resident arrives at Fairfield House we recognise that many of them will have had a difficult experience of learning which has impacted negatively on their self-esteem, for this reason, much of the learning takes place in the home environment in a relaxed way. We aim to assist learning through experiences rather than classroom based activity. Carefully and holistically devised learning, care and health outcome plans aim to foster a sense of self-worth whilst focussing on the key areas of learning. To ensure progress the staff team employ a variety of tools to assist in the collection and analysis of data. This important information is used to focus on individual needs, to plan interventions and devise appropriate strategies so that the needs of the learner are always kept as the main focus and are reviewed regularly. When we welcome a new person to Fairfield House we recognise the important role that the family have already played in their early care and education. We work closely with parents and family to provide appropriate learning and care for their child. Parental involvement is an important part of our work.