For the past few years Cornerstone have been working with Talking Mats—a social enterprise whose vision is to improve the lives of people with communication difficulties.

Together Cornerstone and Talking Mats have developed a resource that will allow anyone we support to be more involved in the process of recruiting their own support staff. The resource will enable the people we support to express what qualities, skills and knowledge are most important to them in a Support Practitioner, and most importantly have their voices heard.

Recruitment Advisor Kerri Bellingham and HR Projects and Research Advisor Debbie Masson set out to create an approach that would directly reflect the National Involvement Network Charter. The Charter was written by people supported in services who state;

“We want to be involved in choosing the people who support us. This includes our support worker, key worker, managers and other staff, volunteers and our advocates. This means we must have the choice to be involved in; writing job descriptions and person specifications, planning interview questions, taking part in interviews and deciding who gets the job.”

Kerri, Debbie and everyone involved in the project believe this recruitment resource will “enable us to more closely match the people we support with their ideal member of staff whilst ensuring they have a pivotal role in the process.”

Cornerstone are also currently working with other organisations who provide residential or day care to help trial this new resource. If you are interested in finding out more please contact [email protected]