by Tanya Hicks
The FREE 2B ME Practice
Support should leave more room for you to be you.
Good support can help you learn, communicate, make decisions, build relationships, understand yourself, address health needs, move through distress and create more of the life you want.
It should not require you to become easier to manage before you are allowed choice, belonging or authorship.
Less fixing. More living.
Start with the person. Then look wider.
No person exists in isolation.
What is possible can be shaped by skills, health, communication, support, relationships, environments, expectations, resources and systems.
Sometimes something within the person needs care or development.
Sometimes something around them needs to work differently.
Often more than one thing is true at once.
The FREE 2B ME Practice does not decide where the answer belongs before looking.
Three places to keep looking
Me. Us. Around us.
Not three categories a person belongs in. Three places to keep looking.
Support can help you change without asking you to become someone else.
People learn.
People develop skills.
People seek treatment.
People practise.
People recover.
People adapt.
People change their minds.
People want things to be different.
FREE 2B ME is not against change. The question is whether the change serves the person’s life.
- A skill matterswhen it creates real options.
- Support matterswhen it makes participation, communication, choice or connection more possible.
- Treatment matterswhen there is something that needs treatment.
- An environmental change matterswhen the conditions themselves are creating unnecessary barriers.
And sometimes the most useful decision is not to change something at all.
Change is allowed. It is not the admission price for belonging.
How the work actually goes
Understand before you decide what to do.
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See what is happening
What can actually be observed - in this life, under these conditions, right now?
Not every interpretation is wrong.
But an interpretation should remain recognisable as an interpretation.
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Look at what else is true
Health. Skills. Communication. Relationships. Support. History. Environment. Demands. Current state.
More than one thing can be true.
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Make access possible
Before asking more of somebody, ask what they need in order to understand, communicate, participate, choose and show what they can do.
Attendance is not automatically access.
Being offered something is not the same as being able to use it.
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Decide together what would genuinely help
- A skill?
- Treatment?
- Support?
- Different communication?
- A relationship change?
- A different environment?
- Less demand?
- More access?
- Something else?
- Several things?
The answer should not be chosen simply because it is the easiest thing for a service to provide.
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Know who has the leverage
Not every useful action belongs with the person. Sometimes the person can act. Sometimes somebody supporting them can. Sometimes a practitioner, organisation, workplace or system holds more of the leverage.
Better support does not ask one person to carry every solution.
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Do the work. Then look again.
- Did it help?
- What changed?
- What did it cost?
- What became more possible?
- What needs updating?
A plan is not successful because somebody complied with it.
The measure is what it made possible in the person’s actual life.
The person stays in the work.
Support should not quietly turn somebody from the author of their life into the subject of everybody else’s plan. That means making room for:
- yes
- no
- not yet
- I don’t know
- I changed my mind
- I need help
- I want to try
- this isn’t working
- I want something different
Communication may happen through speech, writing, AAC, gesture, movement, images, behaviour, silence, refusal, supported communication or later response.
Support can extend authorship. It should not replace it.
Capability with support is still capability.
Needing help does not make an achievement less real.
Using AAC does not make communication less yours.
Needing someone to drive does not make the destination less your choice.
Using medication, equipment, accommodation, routines or another person’s support does not make your life less your own.
Doing everything alone is one possible arrangement. It is not the definition of freedom.
Belonging should leave room for difference.
The aim is not merely to get somebody into the room. It is to make enough room for them to remain themselves once they are there.
- Different communication.
- Different participation.
- Different support.
- Different pacing.
- Different goals.
- Different ways of contributing.
Different participation is still participation.
Belonging should not require disappearing.
Two questions we keep coming back to.
- Does this leave room for the person to be themselves?
- And, for practitioners: what does my practice require the person to become?
Neither is a diagnostic test. Neither replaces evidence, clinical judgement, safeguarding, treatment or professional responsibility. They help us notice what support may be asking of a person before we call the outcome success.
Less fixing has to make room for more living.
Support is not successful merely because distress decreases, behaviour changes or a goal is completed. A life also contains:
- interests
- relationships
- pleasure
- rest
- ambition
- privacy
- work
- learning
- community
- play
- curiosity
- ordinary Tuesdays
And things that matter for no reason other than that the person loves them.
Something does not need to improve you to deserve space in your life.
The FREE 2B ME Practice exists to help make more of that life reachable.
What else could become possible?
Not because the person finally became acceptable enough. Because skills, health care, support, relationships, access and conditions began working together around a life that still belonged to them.
Less fixing. More living.