Reach: Support for living an ordinary life

Reach: Support for living an ordinary life is a resource and set of standards to encourage people to explore what support for living an ordinary life looks like. The Reach Standards were first launched by Paradigm in 2002.  The Reach Practical Guide and refreshed standards were launched in 2019 as a FREE to download resource.

The Practical Guide encourages us all to stay refreshingly curious and committed to discovering what a good, ordinary life looks like for each person we support. Acting on what we discover will enable all to design a person's housing and support with them to avoid 'slotting' people into predetermined systems.

Fundamentally The Reach Standards remind us about the human rights of all and our duty to protect these.

This Reach Practical Guide is in three parts and can be used as a whole or independently of each other.
Part One: describes the important of The Reach Standards, how they can be of value to different people and how they can inform the development of good support and practice. It also shows how The Standards can be used to evidence your good practice to regulators and commissioners.
Part Two: is designed as a section that can be used as a stand-alone resource hosting conversations and planning action around The Reach Standards (families and support workers) 
Part Three: gives you examples of how you can embed and demonstrate how people are being supported to live good lives. It also gives you links to resources and good practice from around the UK and beyond!

Reach defines what support for living is through a set of 9 standards:

People use Reach for a number of reasons

• anyone who receives support in order to live an ordinary life. They may be living in their family home or their own home with the support that they want. It is up to the individual who they live with, whether that be alone, with family or with friends.
• the families and friends of individuals who receive support to find out if the support they are getting is as good as it should be.
• supporters and their team (if you have a personal budget or Direct Payment) to find out if the support they are getting is as good as it should be
• people living in a residential care home who have been thinking of change.  Reach can be a good way to help people, their family, friends and providers work out what they would need to be doing to move towards an ordinary lifeorganisations that support individuals in order to help people improve the support they receive.
• the people who fund support to find out how good an individual’s support is.
• The Reach Standards can be included in an individual’s Support Plan.
• the organisations that are responsible for monitoring the organisations who provide an individual’s support.