Philosophy and Values

Jigsaw Trust believes that every autistic person can and should live a life that allows them the opportunity to reach their full potential and lead full and productive lives.

One of the greatest benefits that the Trust can offer is this provision of an education that maximises each learner’s potential.  It is widely acknowledged that there is a lack of state provided special educational provision for those on the spectrum who are unable to manage within a mainstream educational setting and Jigsaw provides a specialist education through Jigsaw CABAS School for learners age 4-19 and lifelong learning and vocational opportunities through JigsawPlus’ specialist day services for adults aged 18 and over.

 

Everything we do is behaviour

Jigsaw runs a number of social enterprises, designed to invest learners with transferable knowledge and skills to support external volunteering, work experience and vocational opportunities.

The sharing of good practice and expertise is undertaken by running family support through outreach services and parent education sessions.  Training for professionals involved in the education and support of children and adults with autism are run by our own staff who are experts in the field of autism education, lifelong learning and the application of behaviour analysis within a learning environment.

The Trust also offers research opportunities for those with an interest in the education and lifelong learning of children and adults with autism and other related communication difficulties and many staff undertake research that is then presented both nationally and internationally at conferences and published in peer reviewed journals.  See the Research tab on this website for more on our research.

Jigsaw’s Integrated Model for Lifelong Learning illustrates how we achieve our charitable goals and how we are going to achieve our plans for the future.

Jigsaw’s Integrated Model for Lifelong Learning

jigsaw Integrated-circle-model-with-blobs_web

Our Values

Everyone at Jigsaw is committed to our core values of care, teamwork, integrity, continuous learning and personalisation to ensure the best possible outcomes for our learners and to help raise awareness, acceptance and understanding of autism throughout the wider community.
♦   Person centred – we value each learner as an individual, respect their aspirations and commitments in life, and seek to understand their priorities, needs, abilities and limits
♦   Caring – we strive to act with compassion, integrity, honesty and high ethics in all situations, to listen with respect to others and to value differences and create positive, welcoming and encouraging environments for all our learners
♦   Teamwork – we listen to and respect each other whilst working together to achieve best possible outcomes for learners
♦   Integrity – we act professionally, reliably and responsibly at all times to provide the highest quality service to our learners
♦   Continuous Learning – we value the process of continual learning, feedback, coaching and mentoring to build expertise and excellence of service for our community of learners