The MO Project

The MO Project was a Person Centred Approaches Project in East Sussex for people with Learning Disabilities in East Sussex. Funded by the East Sussex Learniing Disability Development Fund it started in September 2010 initially for one year. This was later extended to 18 months, ending in December 2011.

The project grew from our previous work in East Sussex, where we were aware that person centred approaches were not always used a successfully as they could be to improve services and ultimately the live of people with learning disabilities.

We knew there was a need to stimulate the potential for people to be full partners in the creation of their own lives so that the systems around them could respond appropriately to offer useful. In our view person centred approaches should support active participation rather than passive resilience.

The value of Person centred approaches have been understood for many years and the conclusion of well documented research and evidence is that when it works well people can achieve the things they want in lives along side their supporter in equal partnership. However, there is also evidence to suggest that some people have great person centred plans but do not have the plans to match.

The first step for individuals wanting to take control of their lives starts with well-being and comes from recognises their strengths not their weaknesses. So from this place, in line with so much current thinking from the New Economics Foundation and other cutting edge organisations, we developed our approach to work outside of services as much as possible. We wanted to give people the opportunity to have a lived and positive experience, doing something different and celebrating the success they have.

However, we also understand that no one affects lasting change alone. We wanted to catalyse sustainable change; therefore, our intention was to encourage individuals to build positive change teams from unpaid and paid supporters. As an independent partnership, we knew that we also wanted to link up to useful partners and we brought strong allies with us and forged new links along the way.

We would like to extend our warmest gratitude to everyone who helped during this project.