Way Ahead Care - Our Services

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Our Support Services

Way Ahead Care’s separately managed and dedicated Support Team can provide both short and long term services to aid people with their independent living requirements. These services can be within the following categories.

Housing Related Support (Floating Support)
Domiciliary care and support for people with Learning Disabilities
Supported Living Projects
Private Support Packages

The majority of our contracts are funded through the Supporting People Grant and this enables us to provide Housing Related Support to a number of Service User groups. Service Users have to meet eligibility criteria in order to receive this ‘free service’ and these are generally older people and people with Learning Disabilities. We have contracts through the Local Authority for both these services in Taunton Deane and Sedgemoor in Somerset.

What is Housing Related Support? (Floating Support)

Housing Related Support is help you can get to find, or stay in, your own home. This includes help to develop and sustain an individual’s capacity to live independently in their home. To do this the different groups of people who we help to support all need different types of support at differing levels. Some examples of housing related support are:

Managing money, paying bills and working to a budget.
Understanding the rights and responsibilities of a tenancy agreement.
Signposting to other agencies - such as drug & alcohol services, education & employment agencies.
Access training, education, and work.
Support with accessing leisure activities and opportunities to have culture and faith needs met.
Accessing primary health care services such as GP’s and dentist.
Support in order to have more involvement and control with own lives.
Help with house hold tasks.

Housing Related Support generally aims to prevent the problems that can cause vulnerable people to become homeless, build up debts or rent arrears; need hospital treatment or move into care. It also aims to help them have a better quality of life, independent within their community. Housing Related Support does not include services such as personal care, help with eating, washing and dressing, or day care.

Living independently isn’t always easy and finding, or keeping, a tenancy can sometimes be a real challenge. If individuals need help when things go wrong the Supporting People program could be just what people need. Way Ahead Care helps individuals to begin, or keep a life of independence in a place they can call home.

Individuals can self refer to this service or be referred by another agency for example Social Services, Primary Care Trust, Probation or Drug & Alcohol services. On receipt of this referral we will complete our own thorough Needs and Risk Assessment to ensure eligibility and safety. If the Service User meets the edibility criteria we will, jointly with the Service User, complete a Support Action Plan.

However if the individual does not meet the eligibility criteria to received help from the Supporting People project support services can be funded privately by the Service User or third party and we would welcome the opportunity to discuss how we could assist.

Supported Living Projects

Housing with support is often called Supported Living or Independent Living. This means that an individual has their own home or has a tenancy, and a support package is put in place to help them live independently. This could mean that they are supported for a few hours a week, everyday, overnight or 24 hours a day. The support is carefully planned to meet their needs to live independently.

We provide support to a number of Service Users through the community who have Assured Short Hold Tenancies with private landlords. Supporting a varied number of needs this is achieved with either housing related support of approximately 8 – 10 hours a week or through more complex packages of 24/7 domiciliary care & support.