Parent Commissioned Supported Living

Why might it be of interest?
Parent commissioned supported living is a real possibility but rarely talked about and it is difficult to find any relevant information online. The following document discusses what parent commissioned supported living is, why you might want to go this route, why you wouldn’t, about the housing and the young people.

 

Parent-Commissioned Supported Living.

What is it?

When young, disabled people want to live independently from their parents they are likely to move into supported living – which is a home with other young people with disabilities who will be receiving a care package from the local authority supporting them at whatever level of support they need.  It can range from a few hours a week to support 24/7.

The supported living arrangement can be provided by the local authority or by parents commissioning the services themselves.  There isn’t really a half way option although it would presumably be possible for parents to go to the LA with a group of young people who want to live together and ask the LA to arrange it.

A local authority may already have supported living houses and if a place in one of these becomes available it could be offered to your young person.  Or the LA may be aware of a few young people who could live together and they would commission the house and care package for that group of young people.

Where the local authority does the commissioning there is not so much for parents to do – their young person will need an assessment by their social worker to determine their care package but the house and the care provider will all be arranged by the local authority and the costs will be covered directly by the local authority.

When parents commission they have to do all the work themselves – finding, interviewing, commissioning the housing provider and the care provider.  They have to complete assessments with both housing and care providers, manage the tenancy agreement and care package agreement and arrange the social care assessment.  It is a lot of work.

However, housing providers and care providers are all very geared up to supporting young people to moving into supported living and there appears to be a lot of support available to help parents mange the process themselves.

Why would you?

Control – it’s as simple as that. While we believe that the LA have our young people’s best interests at heart they will make decisions based on factors that parents may not consider ideal.

If your young person lives in a LA commissioned home ultimately any issues have to be resolved with the LA’s involvement and if they can’t be resolved your only course of action may be to remove your young person from their home – not as easy as it sounds.

Obviously, things could go wrong with a parent-commissioned home but we believe that with the right preparation we can minimise the likelihood of something going so wrong that a young person wants to leave.

Examples

Care Providers

The LA review their care provider packages every 4 years – they could decide to change care provider and overnight your young person loses the team of people they have come to know (and hopefully like).  Some staff may move across to the new provider but there are no guarantees.

With a parent-commissioned care provider the parent group would work through any problems together directly with the care provider and only make the decision to change care provider if issues couldn’t be resolved – and then they would still be the people who choosing the new care provider.

Who lives in the house?

The LA, with the agreement of the care provider, decide who to offer a place in a LA commissioned home.  You will not be consulted.  Care providers are careful about the mix of young people so it could well work out.

With a parent-commissioned home the parents have greater say over who lives in the house.  Ideally, the initial cohort will stay together but when this isn’t possible and a member of the group leaves their room does need to be filled.  The LA may make suggestions but parents are also free to see if they can find a replacement themselves.

Why Wouldn’t you?

The amount of work involved is probably the main reason:

• To get it all set up

• Ongoing

There is a lot of work to be done to achieve a parent-commissioned supported living home set-up in the first instance and more work to keep it going over the years.  If it is well set up initially you would hope and expect that the ongoing work would be significantly less as the home becomes established.

But even then, any changes, any issues, anything that needs someone to attend to it will be down to you and the other parents to resolve.

Setting up will involve working directly with the housing and care providers, agreeing terms, timescales, assessments, etc.  You will have to ensure that your young person has an assessment of their needs done by Social Services in a timely manner and you will have to take the lead to ensure this happens.  You will be receiving their budget and managing it – it may be sizeable.

Once established you will be responsible for resolving any issues directly with the care and housing providers, paying invoices, etc.

There will always be some work to do.  It is a big commitment on your part, not just for now but for years to come.  You have to build a good relationship with the other parents and manage that over the years to ensure the security of your young person.

If you decide on LA provision the LA will do all this work.

How long does it take to arrange?

From the time you choose your housing provider and care provider it will likely take up to six months.  Unless a housing provider happens to be sitting on a suitable house – not very likely – they are going to have to go out and find it, possibly renovate it, before the young people can move in.

Care providers will need to assess all the young people in detail, appoint a house manager and recruit a team of carers.

However, housing and care providers will do an initial assessment to be sure that they can support your young person before committing and that would only take a week or two.  So you shouldn’t find yourself 2 months into the process only to be told that the provider can’t support your young person.

Once a house is ready to go you will only have a few weeks for everyone to move in.  The young people don’t all need to ready to move in on day 1 but they should all be moved in within 4-6 weeks.

Housing providers and Care Providers

The LA already works with a number of housing providers.  We have spoken to Reside, Golden Lane Housing and United Response.

The LA doesn’t have a preferred list of care providers but works with a number in the borough.  We have spoken to United Response, Achieve Together and Absolute Support.

All the providers were knowledgeable about their areas of provision (as you would hope and expect!) but also about the needs of young people with disabilities – a lot of experience between them and very encouraging for us as parents looking to work with them.

Where do the houses come from?

Houses can come from a variety of sources:

• Owned by the housing provider
  • ie already part of their housing stock
• The housing provider can purchase a property
  • Housing providers seem to have pots of funding for purchase – but limited
  • Via a housing investment group who would buy the property and lease back to the housing provider
• Lease a property
  • From private landlords
  • From developers
• Family / families could buy a property
  • Lease it back to a housing provider
  • Be their own landlord

Long Leases

Obviously we want our young people to be settled in their home without the threat of having to move any time soon.

There seems to be a slightly different approach among housing providers.  Some go straight for a long lease – 10 years – others tell us that the leases are annual but that they only lease from landlords who are leasing long term.

Housing providers are attractive prospects to landlords as the housing provider takes on the lease and therefore is responsible for paying the rent to the landlord so the landlord has a pretty much guaranteed income from the lease and the assurance of ongoing tenancy.

You may wonder what’s in this for the landlord given that they have to shoulder the cost of the house and need to get their money back and make a profit.  It’s the reliability of the tenancy and guarantee of income and that they are working with established, reliable and respected organisations.  They won’t be making their money back quickly but they aren’t taking a big risk with the tenancy.

Rent

The rent on the property is paid via Housing Benefit.

Housing providers seem geared up to supporting young people to make their application for housing benefit so while we will have to do this for our young people we will have the support of the housing provider.

It would appear that housing benefit covers the rent almost always.  If the rent looks as if it is going to be higher than the HB cap the housing provider would work with the HB office to manage this.  There are exceptions to the cap and the housing provider can help with this.

United Response have told us that when they provide the house and the support package together they can use houses that attract a higher rent as this arrangement makes this exempt accommodation.  They try to stick to the HB cap but useful to know that there can be exemptions.

The House

The housing provider will want to know in detail what you need in a house.  There may be a lot of ‘wants’ but initially we have to work with what is needed.  We live in an expensive part of the country already!

The housing provider will look for a house that meets the needs of a specific cohort of young people.  This is why we need to have the cohort of young people before any progress can be made.

The housing provider can carry out renovations and some building works but would initially look for a house that met most of the needs without significant additional work.

There is a demand for housing at the moment.

The Care Provider

Initially there will be a detailed assessment form to complete followed by in person assessments.  The care provider will want to be sure they can support the proposed cohort together.

The care provider will appoint a house manager who will recruit staff to work in the house.  Parents are not usually part of the recruitment process but will be able to meet staff once recruited.

This is a matter of trust with the care provider which is why it is essential to do thorough research before choosing the provider.

The cohort of young people

Supported living can be one person on their own or up to 6 or more living in a house together.  What is important is that we have the cohort of young people before starting the process with the housing and care providers – in fact they won’t start the process without the cohort of young people.

The house is sourced for a specific group of young people and the care provider, while assessing individual needs, will also want to assess how well the group of young people will work out together and if there are any challenges that may need to be addressed.

Who can be in a cohort?

The mix of young people in a cohort can be very varied.  While most of us will be looking for our young people to share with other young people of a similar age there are lots of other factors that will make a match more likely to work.

What is, I think, essential is that parents are very open and honest about their young person’s needs and their behaviours.

Some young people will be much more robust than others and able to cope with changes and larger households than other young people and I think it is very important to understand this about your young person.

Age

A similar age but it doesn’t have to be a very limited age range, eg 20-27 might be very realistic for our young people rather than 20-22.

Degree of disability

I think this is pretty much irrelevant – each young person will have their own care package based on their needs so this doesn’t impact the wellbeing of the other young people in the cohort directly.  What might affect the compatibility is if the young people can’t interact with each other in the ways they would like to as a result of their disability.

Gender

Some young people will need a single sex house, others will be fine in a mixed sex house.

Behaviours

This is important.  Not to judge a young person in any way.

But if your young person is very sensitive to noise living with another young person who shouts a lot may be a bad idea.  Or in a larger household with young people and carers – it can get very busy and noisy at times.  If your young person has some rigid behaviours (mine does!) will the other young people in the house be able to respect the need for those behaviours?  Or will it upset them?

What home environment makes your young person happy?

We all vary in what we want out of our home life.  Some of us want a quiet, calm space; others want a bit more going on.  Some of us want to keep ourselves to ourselves; others want conversation and a bit of fun.  It’s not that these things can’t work together, of course.

But if your young person wants to come home in the evening and have a conversation with their housemates and maybe play a game it may not give them what they need from their home life to live with a non-verbal young person who likes to stay in their room most of the time.

On the other side of the coin if your young person is quite retiring you don’t want them to feel they can’t leave their room because the house is too noisy or busy for them.

Size of household

Some young people will do well and enjoy living in a larger household, others will need a smaller household.  For some young people this will mean living on their own.

The other consideration with size of household is that the larger the number of young people in the house the greater chance there is of your young person having someone living with them where there could be a problem – noise, busyness, personality clash.

And the more young people living in the house the more carers will be needed – so the household could end up having far more people in it at any time than you think when you think of a 3 person household, for example

Expectations and Aspirations

I think these have to match quite well – for the parents involved as much, if not more, than the young people.

This is a conversation that has to be very open and honest.  Once a group of parents have decided to go forward with supported living together it could be catastrophic if one then pulls out part way through.  The whole process could be derailed with everyone back to square one and we need to be very aware of the effects we could have on the young people involved.

We need to be as sure as we can be that we are going to go ahead together and to have explored our expectations and aspirations very thoroughly.  Ideally, we should be getting to know each other and our young people well ahead of starting the commissioning process together.