How we work: the Keys to Citizenship

Purpose sits at the centre. Around it are six more.

• Purpose. A direction of your own. Not a goal somebody wrote for you, but something you would get up for.
• Freedom. Choice over the ordinary things: who comes through your door, when your day starts, what you do with a Saturday.
• Money. Enough of it, and control over it. Household budgeting and bill paying are things people are supported to do, not things done for them.
• Home. Somewhere that is yours, on an ordinary street, where the worker is the guest.
• Help. Given the way you ask for it, with exactly as much as success requires and not a fraction more.
• Life. A week that contains people you are not paying to be there.
• Love. Relationships that last, and the support to build and keep them.

Adapted from Simon Duffy's Keys to Citizenship, published by Citizen Network.

Meeting someone's support needs is the floor we start from, not the goal we aim at. A person can be safe, clean, fed, medicated and still be lonely. The keys are how we check that the plan reaches past the floor.

They also shape how we build our homes and rosters. Small homes on ordinary streets, staff matched to the person, community plans alongside support plans, active support in the real tasks of a household. Each of those is a key made practical.

Alongside the Keys, we draw on Think Local Act Personal from the United Kingdom, the Wellbeing Teams and Buurtzorg models of self-managing teams, and the Australian Government's guide to place-based initiatives.

If you would like to see how a plan measures up against the seven keys, for yourself or someone you support, ask us. Call 02 9556 9500 or get in touch.