NEW Social Night Policy - People First Keighley & Craven

Our New Social Night Policy

Our social nights are very important part of People First Keighley and Craven. When the Out There Club started in 2002, their goal was to support adults with learning disabilities to organise their own social events. This has continued with the social nights of today, which are held once a month at a different venue chosen in a vote by our members.

We hold the belief that they are a first step to advocacy and are still important to our advocacy organisation of today. From the beginning, our social nights and All-Inc parties have always been attended by a mixed group of people from inside our organisation and out of it. However, they have been growing rapidly recently and are becoming a big night out in our area – often bringing together 40 plus people with disabilities, learning disabilities and those who are neurodiverse every month. As the social nights continue to grow, this puts more pressure on our staff who volunteer their time to come and support the social nights. We want to make sure everyone attending has a great night!

So, for anyone who is not a member of People First Keighley and Craven we are asking them to bring someone to support them at our night out. Our staff feel confident in our ability and capacity to support every person who comes to our social nights who are members because we already know about their support needs like mobility, allergies, eating requirements or triggers. This support is often planned before a social night, so we can always be confident that people from our organisation are getting the support they need to have a good time out. And in case anything happened, like a health problem or someone needing to go home earlier, we have the information for all our members to make sure we can keep them safe. It is very important to us that people who are not members can continue to attend our social nights to be able to see friends and meet new people. But moving forward they must bring their own support.

Even if we have emergency contact information for people from outside of our organisation, we cannot make sure everyone at our events can stay safe without appropriate support.

What does this mean?

Starting on our September 2024 social night, all guests from outside of People First Keighley and Craven will need to bring a personal assistant (PA) with them to support them on the social nights. This can be a family member or a carer, or they may already have a PA. The PA will be there to support the person, but they will also be able to join in the fun if they contact the office beforehand to book a meal or ticket (depending on where we are going).

HOWEVER, this can be subject to change as the staff at PFKC will make individual assessments on all guests from outside our organisation as to if they need support or not to continue going to our social nights.

What do we expect of PAs?

As a PA, you are there to enable the person you support to have a social evening.

You can support your person by facilitating and promoting social interaction between them and the other attendees.
Making sure they stay safe while at the event!
Promote behaviour that follows our social night etiquette.
Remember, our social nights are first and foremost for the person you support, so keeping their enjoyment a priority is important to us. This may be their only social event that month.
Be respectful of others privacy and not to take or post pictures of people without their consent.
Give your person space to socialise. You don’t have to sit with them the whole time but be around to provide the support they ask for.