MacIntyre scoop Winner of Winners award at the Skills for Care Accolades

News Release 26 November 2010

MacIntyre have scooped the prestigious Skills for Care Winner of Winners Accolade award recognising their excellence in delivering quality social care services to people across England.

The MacIntyre team beat off stiff competition to win the Most innovative workforce development practice in a specialist service category and then picked up the Winner of Winners Award from guest presenter Penny Smith at the Accolades awards ceremony in London.

MacIntyre is a national charity committed to providing the widest range of services to young people and adults with learning disabilities. In schools, their support services for adults, their community-based education programmes and their transition services offer flexible solutions that encourage independent lives for all whom they support.

MacIntyre have developed the hugely successful Great Interactions project, based on the firm foundations of research within their organisation relating to what made the most significant difference to the experience of the people they support.

The 'facilitation' skills taught through this project have proved to be the core element in those people having a more positive experience of support allowing greater choice and control in their lives.

The programme has been developed to improve the communication skills of the staff, in addition to stressing the underpinning values ensuring that individuals can be 'facilitated' to take a more active part in their own lives. The huge success of this programme is evident in meeting with some of the individuals, many of whom have profound learning disabilities and little, or no verbal conversation. Great Interactions demonstrates that communication is possible in creative and flexible ways with these individuals.

Great Interactions is embraced and endorsed thoroughly by the senior management team. It is the 'golden thread' running through the culture of the whole organisation being embedded in recruitment, job descriptions, supervision, team meetings and all workforce development policies to maintain the effect of this fundamental approach of MacIntrye.

The Skills for Care Accolades are now in their eighth year and are known as the Oscars of the social care world, rewarding excellence in service delivery to some of the most vulnerable people. The Most innovative workforce development practice in a specialist service category was sponsored by Careshield Training Solutions.

"Being nominated for an Accolade is a massive achievement, but the national judging panel which I chaired agreed that the MacIntyre team demonstrated exactly the right mix of outstanding service delivery and genuine commitment to innovation that merited them being our Winner of Winners," says Skills for Care Chair, Professor David Croisdale-Appleby.

"All too often people can take for granted service providers like the MacIntyre team, but winning an Accolade recognises, honours and celebrates the unsung heroes in our communities who support millions of people who use services by delivering high quality services that meet their individual needs."

Media enquiries:

Paul Clarke: 0113 2411297/ 07977519287. paul.clarke@skillsforcare.org.uk