Circles of Support are a pictorial guide on which the relationships and key contacts for a person can be shown. The four circles which make up the guide are broken up into the following categories: Intimacy, Friendship, Participation and Exchange.
Circles of Support are used as an easy guide for support workers to see who is important in the life of the person they support and to show the changes that happen within the relationships they have. It enables support workers to see were relationships are flourishing, and highlights positive and negative changes in a person’s life. Movement of people into the inner Circles of Support show growing relationships in the same way as people disappearing from the outer circles may show an improvement in the person’s life, i.e. support workers, clinicians and health workers disappearing from the Circle of Exchange may indicate an improvement in a person’s overall well being. Circles of Support also highlight failings in a our work practises, for example the reason a person is no longer on a Circle of Support may be due to a failure on our part to enable the person we support to maintain regular contact, or a lack of communication within the support team.
Circles of Support are also a way of showing the areas in which we need to focus. For example, historically people with learning disabilities have a limited Circle of Support, which usually revolves around their family or support network. Our role as an inclusion team is to look for ways to enable the people we support to widen and maintain their Circle of Support. Linking with Essential Life Plans and Community Mapping to ensure all of the tools we use are living documents.
Links are maintained by ensuring all members of the person’s support team have access to an Essential Life Plan which covers the background to relationships and Community Maps which show the practical aspects of how a person can be reached through route maps etc. In this way we can ensure a person has as many friends who are in their lives because they want to be and not because they are paid.
