There is a method called Nueva. People with intellectual disabilities use different services for help. Nueva enables people with intellectual disabilities to evaluate these services.

Service users are the experts!  This was the starting point of the workshop opening by Walburga Fröhlich.  The problem is that in evaluating the quality of our services, the thing that is often missing is the perspective of service users.

We all need to ask ourselves what quality looks like for service users – but this is sometimes quite different from what service users think.

Walburga Fröhlich gave an example of a house where they wanted to make sure all residents had their own privacy.  This is not always easy to find out.  One question might be: ‘Do supporters knock on doors before entering people’s rooms?’  So how do we evaluate this?  We can ask staff, or their bosses – or we can ask the people who live there.  This way we gain an understanding from their perspective.  

Nueva involves service users in developing evaluation right from the start – they determine the criteria for evaluations and carry them out themselves.  For people who want to become an evaluator, a 2-year training course is offered. Issues such as interview techniques, how to respond to people and concentration skills are covered. 

Nueva wants people with intellectual disabilities to be empowered.  Their evaluation method was built and carried out by people with intellectual disabilities.  Harald Siebert, a person with intellectual disability, spoke of his experience of being involved in an evaluation in Berlin.  He said that for the first time in his life he was asked his opinion and taken seriously.  The Nueva project showed him things that he didn’t even know about himself.  It was a challenge for him but he was able to discover his limits, strengths and weaknesses.

Harald Siebert then went on to speak about UNIQ, which was set up as a result of requests from other countries to get help to do the same work as Nueva.   This allowed the evaluation technique to be adapted and trialled in several other countries.  They found that people with intellectual disabilities in lots of countries were interested in becoming evaluators.  UNIQ allowed the evaluation technique to spread to several other European countries. 

Evaluations are commissioned by various organisations – and the money from this is used to pay evaluators a fair wage for their work. 

Of course, the results of evaluation are what it’s all about.  All of the data from evaluations is entered into a computer which clearly shows the quality of a service and where improvements can be made.  All results are given to managers of institutions as well as all of the service users. 

The future looks good for service user involvement in evaluation.  People with intellectual disabilities who have been trained to become evaluators are now spreading the good news – by training other people with intellectual disabilities to do the same. 

Theo Klaus finished by saying that we must always be careful about thinking we know what people can and cannot do.  Nueva and UNIQ have shown us that we really can never know this and that people are capable of far more than we imagine. 

For more information go to: www.neuva-online.info