Supported Living Services

Background

Choice Support currently provides both registered residential care and supporting living services. To understand how this has come about involves a brief recap of the organisation’s history, and the parallel history of the broader learning disabilities scene. When Choice Support opened its first services in the mid-1980s, most were registered under The Registered Homes Act (1984). The act aimed to eliminate poor support providers and improve standards of care, identifying weaknesses through regular inspections. Registered care homes were the dominant model of community care in learning disability services until the late 1990s. In that time Choice Support developed considerable expertise in meeting the requirements of the act, whilst still providing responsive individual services that were not overly regulated. In common with many learning disability service providers, Choice Support began to feel as time went on that there were limitations with the system. At the heart of this disquiet was the tension between trying, on the one hand, to support people to be in control of their own lives, and on the other hand, imposing blanket regulations about how their homes and support should be managed. In recent years, these reservations about registered care, along with changes in legislation, have led to an increase in an alternative model of service provision normally called supported living.

How does supported living work?

A main feature of supported living services is that housing and support arrangements are separate. This means that service users have proper tenancy agreements with their landlords that are independent of the organisation that is providing support. People also have more disposable income because they are eligible for a full range of income support and other benefits. Another strength of the supported living model is that, compared to registered homes, services are less subject to rules and regulations that can seem institutional. However, many people raise a concern about this, saying that in supported living there are insufficient checks to ensure the safety of vulnerable people. We recognise this concern. Actually, important external monitoring is provided by the Commission for Social Care Inspection and also the Supporting People arrangements, which we welcome. In addition, Choice Support extensively monitors all of its services, whether supported living or registered care, through day to day management and rigorous regular checks. In this way, the hard won expertise of twenty years of successfully setting up and managing services is applied to all that we do now. Indeed, much of this expertise has its roots in lessons learned from managing registered care homes. And while recognising the inherent constraints of that model, Choice Support continues to provide the highest possible standard of support in its registered care services.

What are the benefits of supported living?

We believe that supported living offers considerable opportunities to people with learning disabilities. In simple terms, people get a home of their own and more money. For people with learning disabilities, who so often live in poor housing with little money, this means a great deal. That is why we are opening new supported living services in many parts of the country, and also working with funders to convert the status of many of our registered care homes to supported living services. Choice Support’s over-arching aim is that people with learning disabilities should have access to more of the things that go towards making life satisfying and interesting. Things like jobs, homes, friends, partners, families, regular holidays, and a reasonable standard of income. There is no single course of action that will achieve this aim, no one thing we can do to make everything better. But having said that, we do believe that supported living is a significant step forward.

For more information about any of these projects and Choice Support’s other special projects, please contact:

Steven Rose