Reasons why your personal views should not be allowed to influence an individual:

• It is the person who makes the choice not the worker. The worker’s role is to enable the person to make an informed decision by providing them with the right information. Enabling someone is not the same as ‘doing it for’ them.
• You need to make sure that the person is not influenced either by you or someone else and that they are making an independent decision so that they later cannot turn round and say to you that they did what you asked rather than what they decided.
• Many choices carry with them legal rights e.g. Right regarding major/significant decisions (Mental Capacity legislation), the right to decide whether to disclose/share information (Data Protection legislation).

As a support worker you should not pass judgements or moralise with regards to people and the lifestyles they lead or have led in the past. Nobody likes to be judged or have assumptions made about them. The way you value a person for who they are, and they way they are enables them to participate and engage with their own care and support and in the wider community. It allows the person to build up trust which forms a positive working relationship.

Non-judgemental means:

• Not stereotyping the person
• Not making prejudiced comments about a person’s situation either to them or to others e.g. not apportioning blame in terms of their circumstances, or lifestyle or past choices
• Not being negative by focusing purely on their limitations but seeing a person’s potential
• Not being risk averse, but supportive, in addressing the risks they wish to take to maximise their opportunities
• Regarding them as citizens with the same rights and freedoms as everyone else.

Use to answer question 7.3c of the Care Certificate