Kent County
Council Families and Social Care is a key partner in the success of Holly
Lodge. Troy Jones, Commissioning Officer, explained why the Council is so
involved:
Too
often, people with challenging behaviour are housed in residential services which are too large to provide individualised
support, serve people too far from their families and are too restrictive to
provide a good quality life in the home or as part of the local community.
There have been many reasons for this but these services seldom produce good
outcomes for the people living in them, so in Kent we decided it’s time to do
things differently.
We spent a
considerable amount of time viewing various sites. One was rejected because it
was too rural and would limit people’s ability to access the community – and
staff to be able to get to work. Another
was too small and would not provide enough outdoor space and another would have
necessitated more than one storey. The Holly Lodge site wasn’t ideal but did address
many of the issues which ruled out other sites. It was already owned by mcch
and ear-marked for sale or redevelopment as the existing property was unfit for
use, so this also proved to be an advantage.
Three
of the people that will be living at Holly Lodge are moving from services that
are no longer fit for purpose or are unable to meet their needs. The nature of
their behaviour means that they are very hard on their environment and the
housing they are currently living in has become damaged beyond repair. The new
flats are being built to a high specification using robust materials in order
to make them more sustainable. The two other tenants are currently in expensive
out of county placements, moved there because a suitable service wasn’t
available in Kent.
Having lived hundreds of miles from their families, they will now be able to
rebuild these relationships that are so important to anyone, but especially to
people who are so vulnerable.
Support
provision on the site will be shared between mcch and Avenues Group.
Supporting people with challenging behaviour requires a dedicated and flexible
staff team that has good management and supervisory support. We want to ensure
that these people are able to benefit from a more mainstream and personalised
support approach whilst minimising some of the usual issues which result in
service failure such as staff
burnout. By sharing the expertise and management from two organisations,
working closely with multi-disciplinary community teams, the Holly Lodge
Project aims to ensure that staff receive better support and supervision so
that rather than doing things for service users, they will have the confidence
to enable the people they support to do things for themselves whenever
possible. Shared support also provides an additional safeguard as two
independent organisations have daily oversight of the service.
Some
of the individuals living at Holly Lodge will need this specialist environment
for a long time, however it is anticipated that some will respond to this new
approach well enough that they will be able to consider moving to more
mainstream housing, making space available for new tenants. In addition, Holly
Lodge will become a hub of experienced staff able to provide outreach services.
This will be a valuable resource to provide short term support to service users
living in their own homes or with family carers in order to manage or prevent a
crisis.
The
goal of the Holly Lodge Project is to increase the independence of the people
living there. Assistive technology will give them control over their
environment and the opportunity to safely spend time on their own for short
periods, if they wish. Research shows that giving people with learning
disabilities more control and more personalised support will result in
improvements in their behaviour as well as quality of life. This has been the
impetus behind the planning for this project and has heavily influenced design
of the buildings and the support packages.
Although it is a small scheme, this project is
a fine example of how local innovation and working in partnership to do
services differently can help make the lives of disabled people better.
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| Artist's impression of Holly Lodge |
