Reflecting with The Mayday Trust

by Rebecca Belaidi, Ategi's Head of Operations

How do we support people? What do we offer? How do we offer it? What does successful support look like?

These are just some of the questions I have been pondering since joining Ategi. Looking at our offer of support and thinking how this can be improved needs to start with where we are currently. Looking at what is working and why. Also looking at what isn’t working and how this can be changed.  To answer these questions Ategi have started a collaboration with the MayDay Trust.   This is the first of a series of blogs that we’ll be sharing where we explore this collaboration and our process.

Embarking on self- reflection isn’t always the most comfortable thing to do, we want to project ourselves as the best in our field to the outside world so will this process undermine and uncover flaws that we don’t want to share? Following conversations with our CEO and other Ategi colleagues we felt that the benefits of change outweighed any of the downfalls and we started conversations on how we can move this process forward which is where the idea of collaboration emerged...

Change requires space and time to open up to reflect and assess our processes. We strongly felt that an outside organisation would be able to lead us out of our safe Ategi space into an area where we can delve into the true concept of a blank piece of paper. We approached the Mayday Trust to have a conversation about a collaborative piece of work to look at our support offer. We chose Mayday Trust due to their reputation for successfully supporting people to overcome great obstacles in their lives through delivering support in a dignified and holistic way to ensure the person was put at the heart of the journey. This was the start of building a partnership to upskill our teams and to develop a new way of working. Meeting the Mayday Trust went well and many elements of the conversations felt right and supportive of the fit with Ategi and our core values. Working out the way ahead was vital. Setting our objectives and targets to develop a meaningful piece with Mayday was underway and it felt good to share this journey with them. The Mayday Trust guided us in the meeting to look at how their Systems Reflects, which is about sharing experiences and allowing space to reflect on current systems, could support our staff and leadership team in these early stages of your journey into strengths-based working. They expressed that they would be able to work with us and to deliver a personalised and effective introduction to working in a person-led way, as well as practical and applicable learning to ensure that strengths-based approaches are embedded across the organisation – from frontline delivery to leadership and governance.

Our first face to face between the Mayday Trust and our support teams starts at our Head Office in Wales on Monday, where our support staff will have the opportunity to spend time throughout the day exploring our current support offer and opening up the floor to ways in which this can be developed and improved.

Communication, collaboration and involvement is key to driving this process forward. I look forward to seeing how this develops and reporting back very soon to update everyone on this journey.             

Find out more about how Ategi supports individuals with support needs     

Change requires space and time to open up to reflect and assess our processes. We strongly felt that an outside organisation would be able to lead us out of our safe Ategi space into an area where we can delve into the true concept of a blank piece of paper.