Introduction to Swanton Care and Community

Swanton Care and Community was established in 2006 when the first two homes opened simultaneously in Norwich. However the companies’ relationship with NAPPI goes back almost 16 years when the Maestellio homes (Now Swanton) adopted NAPPI as their preferred model of Positive Behaviour Support, followed in 2004 by the Autism North homes (now also part of Swanton Care and Community).

Today Swanton supports over 300 individuals within almost 30 services across the UK, with around 900 staff dedicated to the needs of these individuals.

Swanton services include:

Swanton provide various Supported living packages for individuals with needs such as:

Our team of highly trained staff are able to adapt to the changing needs of the individuals we support with a focus on improving opportunities and increasing independence, health and well-being.

With experienced teams across the UK, Swanton is proud of being both professional and personable in its approach to high quality support. Swanton is a young, forward thinking organisation. We look to promote social inclusion; opening doors to opportunities and experiences that enhance lives and create new and unique adventures. We focus on enablement and maximising independence to work with people who use our support to be co-producers of their own goals and outcomes.

The following questions were put to Swanton Care and Community:

What was your identified training need?

Both the Maestellio homes and the Autism North homes required a formal and consistent approach that would positively support people within the homes.

After trialling several different providers both groups felt that NAPPI was easily transferable, and the trainers within NAPPI had backgrounds of working within Care Services so knew the reality of the roles that staff were undertaking.

This paved the way for the rest of the services to also adopt the NAPPI model when Swanton took over these two groups in 2007.

Why did you choose NAPPI?

As mentioned the Maestellio and Autism North homes which are now both Swanton Care and Community selected NAPPI due to the ease at which it could be transferred from the training room to the roles of the staff.

From the very beginning of the relationship NAPPI have always been very supportive of the services and the staff within the homes from Andy Skinner delivering the first NAPPI sessions in Wales to the current day the support has been second to none.

In recent years one of the other key components to Swanton’s continued support of NAPPI is the BILD accreditation they hold, as an organisation we want our staff to have a recognised training provider and this also offers us a greater level of legal safety knowing that NAPPI as an organisation are in the minority of training providers who are accredited.

What difference has NAPPI made?

In the last 15+ years the behaviours across the whole of Swanton’s services have decreased dramatically. Staff are better able to recognise early levels of behaviour and are trained to de-escalate these quickly. Many training providers focus on the physical aspect of dealing with challenging behaviours, NAPPI aims to prevent it getting that far!

NAPPI now filters through every aspect of our positive behaviour support plans from prevention to management of behaviours both psychologically and physically and into the post incident reviews. Many of our homes have on-site trainers who are able to support the staff and individuals within the services and an overall NAPPI co-ordinator to support all of the on-site trainers.

Statement from Jacqui Orrells – Regional Operations Director Swanton Care and Community:

"I joined Maestellio in 2000 as an Assistant Manager and completed a NAPPI course very shortly after with Andy Skinner (NAPPI uk). I had previously completed other challenging behaviour courses and I was very impressed with NAPPI and the course content.

I have also trained as a NAPPI trainer at levels 1-3 and I thoroughly enjoyed delivering the courses, I now have two trainers within my regions trained to deliver the same level and they both comment on how good the courses are and the after care/support following the training.

The most important aspect for me is how we have improved the lives of the service users, by staff all using the same non abusive approach we have reduced challenging behaviour significantly. All of the techniques have developed over the years and this helps to support the changing needs of the service users we support."

Statement from Emma Holt – NAPPI Co-ordinator Swanton Care:

"NAPPI and Swanton continue to have an excellent partnership; the values of NAPPI are in-keeping with the values of Swanton and as Swanton and the individuals we support adapt and change NAPPI does too.

The positive behaviour support model is a fantastic tool and helps to embed the culture of increasing opportunities for the people within our services, not just the individuals we support but the staff who support them too.

Unlike some other training models NAPPI can be easily transferred into the day to day roles of the staff which makes it more realistic and this realism is obvious during training sessions when staff are easily able to link the training to real life scenarios.


100% of courses delivered are also audited both internally and externally and this again provides an additional layer of support and is also one of the many reasons why Swanton Care and Community have continued to work alongside NAPPI and will continue to work alongside them for many years."