Our Story

Zeida Lane is a collaborative team of consultants, trainers and coaches who work alongside people with learning disabilities and everyone who supports them in their lives. Our aim is to work together to improve the way good support grows great lives.

We build ‘Partnerships for Progress’ with allies – so that we can create the conditions for everyone to thrive and to reach their own potential - making Positive Changes, step by step, on the way. We support this with our one-to-one work, groups, workshops, training, events & web-based approaches (to share good practice, start quality conversations & inspire learning).

Together, we establish wellbeing and resilience as the basis for individuals and teams to find their own agency and autonomy – before taking action. In this way we have developed projects that have a real transformational impact and lasting change that matters. We believe our approach is a vital balance to the heavy focus on risk and safety that can stifle the most promising of lives.

We draw on a number of influences - with a foundation in communication and coaching approaches and blending the best of person centred and self development approaches. There is a vast range of wisdom in the world from real people and places that is a rich resource to fuel our work and inspire us to be creative and think outside-the-box to maximum effect.

Our values are important to us and we constantly seek ways to show them in our actions. We work with individuals, families, communities, Organisations, Local Authorities, Voluntary Organisations, Services, Consultants and Health and Social Care professionals.

Early in 2010, three people from very different backgrounds and experiences came together to work on concerns that will be familiar to many reading our story:

• Why are many people's lives not changing dramatically for the better despite Person Centred Approaches, increased awareness of flexible communication approaches and the emerging complexity of support staff training?
• What needs to be done differently to ensure that people get the maximum benefits from contempory policy and practice?

If we could answer these two questions then perhaps we would be able to support people to make positive changes in their lives, in partnership with those who care for and know them well, to live the lives they want and be well supported to do so.

The company was formed in 2010 following a successful local government funding bid for a Person Centred Approaches project working with people with learning disabilities in East Sussex to explore these questions. Zeida Lane Associates is a collaboration of individuals sharing common values and goals. The company acts as a platform for us to bring the right people together, at the right time and place to help find good answers.

As an organisation we have a fresh, innovative and focussed approach; our consultants and trainers are experienced, knowledgable and united in their belief that there is always room to reflect on the past and do things better than before.