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These are our Core Values:

• People with disabilities have the same human value and worth as anyone else.
• People with disabilities have the right to achieve the same lifestyles as other people in the community sharing the same benefits and responsibilities that go with citizenship.
• Services must recognise the individuality of people with disabilities and should afford them the same dignity, respect, status and rights as other citizens.
• People with disabilities are people first . . . their disability should be no more a barrier in their life than should any other personal factor affecting anybody in the community.
• Their social, clinical and medical care needs should be provided for with access as a human right.

From these core value statements we have developed a range of service values, aimed at promoting good practice in the development and management of our services.

PRINCIPLES IN ACTION

Meeting the challenge
Valuing People challenges us, as providers of services for people with disabilities.  We welcome this challenge.  Over the years Real Life Options has focused on different ways of supporting people.  Initially we only provided residential care - now we have a variety of support mechanisms which are designed to be flexible, creative and challenging.

Supported Living
Our supported living services are developed on the basis of the following principles:

• Flexibility in service provision - the tenant is involved in deciding what support they need and how it should be provided.
• Home ownership, choice and control.  People with learning disabilities have their own home or choose to live with someone else. They have their own tenancy and legal rights.
• Tenants control their own finances and decide how they want to use their own money to maximise the quality of their life.
• Focus on positives.  We provide help and advice and support so that tenants achieve positive outcomes.  Equally we support them to develop new opportunities and have aspirations for the future.
• An ordinary lifestyle accessing local facilities, education, leisure centres, work and sport.

We support people with a wide range of disabilities to live in supported housing.  Many tenants have shared tenancies with other people.  Housing is provided through housing associations, private landlords or council owned properties.

Supported living is a way of enabling a person with a disability to live their own life.  It is not just another service model.  People are individual and their lifestyles reflect that individuality.

Vocational Daytime and Outreach Services
People with learning disabilities want meaningful lives.  They want to choose to do different things, have new experiences, meet new people as well as spend time with family and existing friends.  Our vocational and outreach services provide skilled and experienced staff to work alongside service users on an individual basis, helping them to do what they want to do. We help people to gain employment, or to find a sports centre where they can choose to do the sports they want.

Our services are not programmes, they are flexible and as different as each person we work with.

Independent Living
People with learning disabilities sometimes decide that they want their own place to be totally independent.  To achieve this they may need varying degrees of support on a regular basis.  Our teams of staff are flexible, reliable and skilled in enabling people to decide what they want and to provide unobtrusive support, helping people maximise their control over their own lives.