Support Services

Our CQC registration authorises us to support the following age groups:

•  Children and Young People (13-18),
•  Adults (18-65)
•  Older Adults (65+)

With the following care and support needs;

• Learning difficulties and / or autism
• Mental health difficulties
• Physical disabilities.

In addition to learning difficulties, some individuals might have complex needs, for example,

• Physical health needs such as epilepsy, or
• Mental health difficulties, or
• “Challenging behavioural” needs, for example, self-injurious.

The care and support we provide is tailored to individual assessed needs, and is designed to empower service users to enable greater autonomy and independence. Care and support is provided according to individual packages, which vary from a few hours a week, up to 24- hours a day.

Depending on individual support plans, care and support provided includes;

• Personal hygiene including feeding when required
• Medication (prompting, administration, supervision)
• Support with activities of daily living such as shopping, meal preparations, paying bills, budgeting, etc.
• Community connections, including support to participate in chosen diverse activities.
• Developing and maintaining meaningful relationships / friendships with family and friends
• Attending scheduled or unscheduled healthcare appointments.
• For individuals with autism who experience sensory sensitivities, we support them to draw up and implement sensory diets to ensure that their needs are met.

• We effectively use values-based recruitment process to attract and keep staff who have compatible values, behaviours, attitudes and aspirations to meet the standards of care needed for our service users.
• We invest in our staff, and offer a rich, rewarding and supported work experience in order to attract and retain the right calibre of staff, enabling us to deliver the quality that other providers may lack.
• Wherever this is applicable, we involve people who use the service and / or their families in the recruitment process to identify the right staff who are responsible of providing the right support / care.
• We match staff with service users, for example, using hobbies, interests, gender and age.
• We build a consistent team of support staff based on an individual needs, a team that works well together for the benefits of the individual being supported.
• We ensure our staff receives regular trainings tailored to service users’ needs, and we constantly monitor staff performance throughout their employment. Specific trainings such as autism, ADHD, PBS or CALM can be delivered depending on service users’ needs.
• We support staff through regular supervisions, yearly appraisals and team meetings.
• We undertake periodic unannounced visits as part of observed supervision in order to embed / engrave our values and challenge poor practice.

We:

• Put the individual we are supporting at the centre of everything in anything regards their support needs.
• Take time to find out individual life experiences, their background history (including knowledge about individual culture, beliefs, traditions, habits, activities), their preference, and how they want to be supported and why they like things done in a certain way.
• We then deliver a service that is respectful, dignified, compassionate, and appropriate, that meet and reflect individual needs, ethical and moral beliefs, and preferences/choices, as opposed to organisational standards or routines, because one size does not fit all.

Support plans;

To ensure service users’ daily needs are adequately met, support plans will be developed in partnership with the service user and all the people who are important to each person. The support plan details what work will be done together to reach the specified and agreed goals and highlight to staff what to do as well as how to do it, in the way the individual chooses.

Person centred plans;

In addition to support plans, all service users will have a person-centred plan which identifies their dreams, aspirations, strengths, gifts and talents, and the plan gives a framework for which the persons’ support team works with the person to achieve outcomes and hence develop one’s life.

Individuals that we support have a right to:

• Feel valued and to be treated with respect
• Feel secure
• Be heard
• Be able to maintain dignity
• Be able to regain and maintain their independence as much as they are able.

We deliver care/support that:

• Empowers individuals to understand and decide on what’s best for them (‘informed choices and decisions’).
• Allows negotiation of care/support, hence involving individuals in their care and support.
• Promotes two-way communications with service users, communicating and involving individuals when things aren’t going to plan.
• Monitors individuals’ care and support, progress and or deterioration and hence seeking immediate interventions to ensure wellbeing is maintained.

• We provide a service that goes well beyond the provision of basics of ‘care’ such as personal care, instead we provide a service that enable individuals to achieve a good quality of life.
• We build therapeutic relationships with the people we support (while maintaining professional boundaries), relationships that are founded on trust so that a high level of care and support is given.
• We provide a service that integrates and connects people with their communities. Community connections give individuals a sense of purpose in life and promote development of links where individuals can have opportunities of meeting new people and developing meaningful friendships and hence achieving fulfilling and meaningful lives. In turn our staff actively supports all such relationships while being mindful of the risks that sometimes are presented in close or intimate relationships.
• We believe that life is a mixture of fun, things to do, things to achieve and things to contribute to others. We will not use risk as an excuse to restrict people’s lives, instead we are brave and will support individuals to take proportionate risks while balancing the benefits against the potential harms. In consideration of individual experiences, abilities, personal interests and hobbies, our staff supports individuals to learn new skills, to try new experiences and to take more responsibility for their own occupation, care and safety and hence encouraging more independent functioning, promoting personal growth and development.
• We provide individual tailored assistance to engage meaningfully in preferred domestic, work activities (paid / voluntary), education/college, social and sports/leisure interactions. Community participation enables individuals to live more equal, ordinary and socially inclusive lives.

• We believe in people, as we actively listen and involve service users, including their families or advocates in decisions concerning their support and care, including drawing and evaluating care/ support plans.
• We support service users to be themselves not expect them to fit into the service or how we think they should be. We start from where you are in the journey of your life.
• We treat service users as experts in their own right, active participants and not as passive recipients of care.
• We work with other health and social care practitioners, drawing upon their expertise in order to respond well to people’s needs.
• We continuously reflect on our practice, listening and acting on feedback in order to improve the work we do.
• We are innovative with the way we work, supporting individuals to realise their goals and aspirations.

We manage this sensitively and systematically to minimise the difficulties involved such as anxieties and stress.

We closely work with:

• The individual and those who know the individual very well, such as family members, guiding us through the process on how they want things to be done.
• The existing provider or staff to facilitate smooth handover.
• We continuously check and adapt support based on feedbacks.

Housing – Accommodation

For individuals who does not have accommodation, when required:

• While working together with the service user, families and or advocates, and or other professionals (for example, social workers or OTs), we support individuals with the identification of appropriate and sustainable accommodation to meet individual needs.
• We support service users in the purchasing of their furniture, decoration of their homes (to reflect individuals’ preferences, cultures and beliefs) as individuals choose,
• We can also support individuals with orientation with new neighbourhoods / communities