Our Promoting Independence Project is now in its fourth year of working with people to live independently.
It’s an exciting time for the project – we have now celebrated 12 customers achieving 18-24 months of living independently, and completing their time with us.
A huge well done to our amazing customers, partners and teams! Here’s an update on some of their achievements over the last year.
Our team are currently working with
0
people, and an amazing 35 of these customers are living independently.
Finding the right home
We work with our customers to live as independently as possible, in a home that’s right for them. Our customers choose to move on to different kinds of homes, depending on their needs, goals, and preferences. They’ve moved to extra-care accommodation, private-rented houses, supported housing, social housing, and more.
This also results in both savings to the social care budget, and in improvements to our customers’ recovery stars. The recovery star is a tool for measuring and supporting change, and captures how individuals are managing their mental health, building trust and hope, developing living skills, and more.
We use strengths-based and motivational interviewing approaches to build relationships, and to offer person-centred and co-designed support to the people we work with.
By really getting to know our customers, we can find out about what interests them, inspires them, and motivates them to make changes. For many of our customers, there is a strong desire to re-visit interests, hobbies and activities that they have participated in previously. We’ve also worked with customers to do things they haven’t had the confidence to try before.
Partnership working
Our collaborative work with Community Mental Health Team’s (CMHT) has been integral to our customers’ success. For one individual, their progress was reflected in their discharge from Section 37/41 mental health act conditions on the recommendation of their clinical team. A psychiatrist in the CMHT commented that one of our customers demonstrated a “great example of recovery”.
Introducing Baby the cat
Customer G was aiming to adopt a rescue dog – he trialled two dogs for adoption, but neither were 100% suitable. G has been working on this goal with his Health and Wellbeing Coach and recently adopted the lovely ‘Baby’, a two year old cat.
Thriving in work
Some of our customers have had goals related to finding paid and unpaid work. Three individuals have been supported to find volunteering roles (in a charity shop, library, and a charity project’s kitchen), and customers have also taken part in our Good Work employment support programme.
The Promoting Independence Project supports people living in residential care to move out and live independently. They have space for new referrals, and would love to hear from anyone who has a goal to live more independently.
If you’d like to find out more for yourself, or for someone you work with, please email our team on promotingindependence@syha.co.uk
