Montessori
Montessori methodology was developed by Maria Montessori to educate children with special educational needs. Today, Montessori principles are also applied in care settings, especially for the elderly and people living with dementia.
In 2018, our Head of Professional Services, Marina, was introduced to the Montessori methodology by Nati Beltran, a Montessori teacher, who invited Cabrini House staff and residents to take part in a research project aimed at discovering new ways to support adults with learning disabilities in achieving their goals.
Following the positive outcomes from this research, David McGuire, CEO of Diagrama, asked Anne Kelly, Head of Montessori for Dementia, Disability, and Ageing, to deliver training for staff across various services at Diagrama in 2019. Following the success of the first training, Anne Kelly provided a further course to Diagrama staff in 2022, as the organisation had grown and acquired new services.
After the training, Marina was offered the opportunity to complete an additional certification to become a Montessori practitioner and successfully completed the certification in 2023, becoming the first person to complete the certification focused on adults with learning disabilities.
In line with Diagrama ethos, Montessori focus on person centred care, promoting dignity, choice, and independence, involving individuals in decisions about their own care, preserving their dignity by offering choices rather than assuming what they need or want. From this training, staff learned the importance of promoting choices, wider people’s aspiration and ambitions, positive risk taking and supporting people to live fulfilling lives.
Montessori’s flexible and strength-based approach can be applied to every person, regardless of their abilities, providing them not only with meaningful activities but also the opportunity to develop their skills, independence, and self-esteem, thereby encouraging self-sufficiency.
Our staff invest time in getting to know who the person is, how they communicate, their background, likes, dislikes, hobbies, and routines, so that we can truly support them in living their best lives. We offer a range of appropriate activities, identify roles the person can fulfil, focus on activities of daily living to promote independence, and implement proactive strategies to prevent behaviours of distress. Montessori training has provided excellent tools to staff to design activities and roles based on people’s interests and tailor them to everyone's abilities, breaking down each task into achievable and manageable subtasks.
Diagrama aim to provide "future-proof" services, and we take pride in our approach to adapting environments and ways of working to accommodate people’s changing needs. Montessori has helped Diagrama strengthen this approach and better support people over the long term.
Montessori training also helped Diagrama to promote people’s choices by preparing environments and adapting the choices to people’s needs, leading to better engagement and satisfaction. People gain independence and control interacting in stimulating environments with attractive real-life activities adapted to their needs and tailored according to their strengths. Diagrama focus on what people “can do” rather than in what people “can’t do” and supporting them to develop skills; instilling a sense of responsibility and purpose in every activity or task and allowing people to make valuable contributions within their community.
Diagrama believe that people flourish when have the opportunity to be themselves, feel seen and listened, have a sense of purpose, are able to speak up and empowered to take decisions about their lives and surroundings. At an organisation level, we believe coproduction is essential to design, deliver and evaluate effective services and/or policies, working in partnership with people using the service and their families to make decisions.
The Diagrama Foundation is committed to the continuous development of its employees.
We have an extensive programme which embraces both initial and ongoing training activities. Individual training needs are identified throughout each employee’s career with the Foundation and appropriate training and development is provided on an ongoing basis, in line with their job role and development needs.
The Foundation works closely with the Eduardo Benot Institute which offers over 60 courses through its online platform. This virtual campus presents several advantages as it caters for a high number of students, offers a flexible timetable to meet individual student needs and creates a high quality learning environment for the communication and exchange of information and knowledge. To date, Diagrama has delivered training to more than 4,000 employees via the Institute.
