Sophie’s Supported Living Journey

This document is currently a bit of a disorganised dump of those notes! Hence it is not in any particular order but it does hold a lot of relevant information if you are considering parent commissioning.

Why might it be of interest?
This is a personal experience of setting up supported living for 3 young people with significant learning disabilities. The notes cover a wide range of topics and activities we had to undertake to get to the point where our young people were living together in their own home locally.

There are not many examples of parents who have parent commissioned so if this might be of interest to you these notes are also likely to be of interest and hopefully helpful.

 

Sophie’s Supported Living Journey

Sophie lives in LB Richmond and our experience is based on how things work in this locality.  However, it shouldn’t be much different in other boroughs.

Housing Benefit

• Do not need to be on the housing register to get Housing Benefit in a supported living placement
• Housing benefit covers more than rent
• You can only apply when you have signed the tenancy* and moved in
  • Do it promptly
  • A lot of questions
  • Your care or housing provider can provide support

*if a young person (yp) doesn’t have capacity to sign the tenancy agreement and parents do not have Power of Attorney (PoA) to sign on their behalf the tenancy agreement doesn’t have to be signed if there is a best interests decision that living in the house is in the young person’s best interests.

The housing benefit form is long and asks for a lot of information so it is best to complete it with support from your housing/care provider as there is likely to be information that you will not know yourself.

Once the application has been completed you will receive an acknowledgement from the housing department and you may be asked for further information:

• ID documents for your young person
• Information about the care provided from the care provider
• The tenancy agreement.

You will need to make an appointment to present the documents at the Civic Centre.

Parent commissioning

• Discuss different approaches and expected outcomes with each other
• Explore expectations
• Be very honest about your yp – the good and the bad
• All new and takes time to bed in
• Write ‘no agency’ into the contract
• Could take 6 months to a year to settle
• Your yp should have a key worker
  • Someone you can work with for goal setting, progress reports, etc

Support package

Try to get hours included for:

• Extra care if they go on holiday
• out of usual hours, eg for late appointments

Local options

• LA are trying to free up houses for young people
• This involves moving older people so has to be handled sensitively and in the longer term
• Finding a property is the biggest challenge
• Lots of ‘voids’ around the borough so individual young people may be able to find a place
• Vacancies going unfilled as wrong age group for young people
• Current properties come with an existing care provider already contracted to the LA so couldn’t change this until the contract ends
• Looking at developing a more diverse range of options
• LA block contracts care providers

Local providers

The LA does not have a list of providers that they use or would recommend parents use but they do have a list of current providers in the borough.

If parent commissioning you can use anyone you like but it makes sense to use providers who already work in the area, understand the local area and offerings.

Care

• Certitude
• Walsingham
• United Response
• Metropolitan / MTVH
• (Lifeways)
• Achieve Together
• Absolute Support
• (Richmond – RPF)
• Elysium (London Care Partnership)
• LD Care

Housing

• Reside
• Golden Lane
• United Response

Far from exhaustive list!  Some providers will have experience of working with parent commissioning others will not – ie they will only have worked with the local authority.

You can do your research and talk to care and housing providers to understand how they work.

If your young person is joining an existing house commissioned by the local authority you don’t have any choice over provider.

Social care support package:

• The care provider will speak to family, current setting – whether that’s another home or residential college, school, etc
  • Really, anyone who can provide information relevant to the young person living in supported accommodation
• They want to have a clear and full picture of the young person and their needs
• You would expect phone and zoom conversations and visits to current placements if possible
• The care provider, once they have a good picture of the young person and their needs, would put together their proposed care package and submit to the local authority
• They will take into account whether the young person is likely to be at college; whether they might take courses at the local adult college; how many 1-1 hours they might need; shared hours with other residents; etc
• There’s likely to be some back and forth between the local authority social care team and the care provider to agree the support package – which takes time
• The care package should be agreed before the property is taken on by the housing provider
  • Otherwise they risk being left with a contract on a property and no young people with a support package living in the property – an unlikely scenario of course but not impossible
• If you are parent commissioning the care package budget will be paid to you
  • And you will pay the invoices from the care provider
• If your young person has not already been receiving a care package via direct payments the LA will set up an account for you to pay the money into and from which you can pay the care provider invoices
• Not all care providers have experience of working directly with parents commissioning services themselves
• Care providers will do a thorough assessment and will say no if they don’t believe a young person will fit well in an existing household
• Compatibility is important
  • So residents don’t trigger each other
  • eg someone noise sensitive in a busy and loud home

Questions for Housing providers for parents commissioning

• Is there a standard process
• Do you work directly with parents of disabled yp who are unable to make their own decisions (ie parent commissioning)
• Do you organise the housing benefit application
  • Or is this something parents do
  • With your support
• Will you do renovations
• Do you have your own properties
  • What sort of properties – size, etc
  • If you don’t have your own properties where do they come from
• Can you acquire a suitable property
• What’s the lead time
• How far ahead can a property be secured before the yp move in
• What happens if a yp moves out and is not immediately replaced
  • Are the other tenants responsible
  • Would the LA step in
• How long is a lease
• Who is responsible for buildings insurance
• What can tenants do to personalise their home
  • Decorating and painting
  • Hanging pictures
• Who is responsible for maintenance
• Are houses usually unfurnished
• Who pays for furnishing the house
• What is a tenant likely to be responsible for
• What would happen if we came to you and said we need a house for 3 or 4 young people in 6 months’ time and they need a sleep in carer

These notes are an amalgamation of what housing providers told us.  I’ve done it this way as there are not huge differences between how providers work.  So, a provider may not work exactly like this but there will be a similar process in place.

You can contact housing providers and care providers to talk to them about what they do and how they work as general research before deciding which organisations to go with (if parent commissioning – if the LA are organising then you go with the incumbents)

Reside:

• Based in Hampton but work countrywide
• Established in 2002
• Small family run business, 40 staff
• Provide supported housing, Don’t provide care
• Work with 80 providers across the country, 350 properties, 1000 tenants
• Have a small pot of money to buy properties, single and shared
• Launched with Resonance, a social impact fund
• Don’t hold a housing stock
• Acquire to the individual

Golden Lane Housing:

United Response:

• Lease properties from private landlords, developers
• Shorthold tenancies but looking for long leases
• Part of housing investment group, Resonance
• A family could buy a house and then lease it to UR

Resonance:

• Social impact investment company
• Essentially a pot of money to invest in housing
• Local organisation finds the property
• Money available for some refurbishment
• Resonance purchase and lease to local housing provider

Achieve Together:

• Care agency
• Large provider now as 2 smaller providers – Regard and CMG – merged
• Support people with LD and ASD
• 2000 people countrywide
• They have a clinical team – nurse specialist, clinical director and behaviour advisor
• Learning and development team for standard training and specialist as needed
• Work closely with Reside but not aware of any parent commissioned set ups
• Can purchase and lease a property to a housing association but smaller units not financially viable

Process:

• Start early – at least 3-6 months ahead of when you would like your young person to move
  • It could take much longer so be prepared for this
• Housing provider / care provider will ask you to complete a very detailed form about your young person’s housing and care needs
• If a cohort of young people who want to live together has been put together then each young person will need to complete the form
• The housing / care provider will assess and see if they can meet the needs of each young person and the needs of the young people as a group
• The agreement will be made by a management team and it’s likely to take one or two weeks to get a decision
• The care and housing providers will need evidence that the young people will have a care package to meet their needs
  • So you will need to be speaking to your social worker and putting them in touch with the care and housing provider(s)
• Once the housing / care provider have agreed they can support the young person or cohort then the process continues on this basis
  • ie it is not any group of young people, it is this group of young people
• Some providers can provide just housing or just care, others, like UR, can do both
• Housing and care providers are used to working together and will have a contract and service level agreement together
• The contract and SLA will lay out who is responsible for what in the house during the tenancy
• For providers like UR who can do both housing and care you can use them for either or both and another provider for the other part
  • However, their experience is that it works better when they provide both housing and care
• Providers are likely to have some money for refurbishments in a property but would be looking at properties that don’t need a lot of work
  • Basically because of the cost
• Housing can only be secured approximately 6 weeks before move date
• Care package planning can start much sooner as there will be a lot of work for the care provider to do to put together a care package:
  • Speaking to family
  • College
  • Other settings
  • Social care
• There will likely be a lot of back and forth between the care provider and social care before a package is agreed
• Once the package is agreed and the house secured the young people can move in
  • They don’t all have to move in on the same day
  • They don’t have to move in immediately but it would be expected that they are ready to move very shortly after the house is available

• The family will have the ultimate say on the house provided and likely involved in the search
  • As long as it is affordable on housing benefit rates
• See below for information on local housing allowances and exempt accommodation

Tenancy agreements:

• If a parent has Power of Attorney for their young person they can sign the tenancy agreement on their behalf
• If parents don’t have PoA and the yp does not have capacity to sign the agreement themselves it can remain unsigned
• A ‘best interests’ assessment will be carried out by the social worker and this is enough to agree the tenancy
• The yp has the same rights whether the tenancy agreement is signed or not
• You could get an order from the Court of Protection to sign the tenancy agreement but this will take several months and isn’t necessary
• You can’t sign the tenancy agreement as the young person’s DWP appointee

Where do properties come from?

• If the property is coming from the private rental market housing providers will want to work with landlords looking for long term leasing
• The housing provider will work with the letting agent and have permission to sublet to the young people
• The housing provider is effectively the landlord for the young people – they do not deal directly with the owner of the property
• Properties are leased under an assured shorthold tenancy
• There may sometimes be an option for the housing provider to purchase a property

Local Housing Allowance:

Most people now claim housing costs under universal credit but if your young person is in supported housing they will still be claiming Housing Benefit for their rent.

Local housing allowance rates are the amounts that the local authority use to base how much they will pay of your rent if renting privately.  If the rental on a property is higher than the LHA the LA will usually only pay the LHA amount and you have to top up for the rest out of your own income.

There are exceptions and disabled people living in supported accommodation will usually be entitled to the one bedroom rate rather than the shared accommodation rate.  But if, for example, if a young person needs a sleep in carer they would be entitled to the 2 bedroom rate.  In a parent commissioned house with 3 young people who all need a sleep in carer each young person is entitled to the 2 bedroom rate.

There are a lot of rules around who can and cannot claim housing benefit and the rate they are entitled to but for most of the disabled young people we are talking about here they will be in some kind of supported housing if not living at home and this information applies to them.

Exempt Accommodation:

Supported living accommodation where there is a housing provider also providing a care package or a housing provider providing a care package via a contract with a care provider is considered exempt accommodation and rent caps don’t apply and other costs can be included in the rent and eligible costs.

The housing provider and care provider must be separate.  For organisations like United Response there is an internal separation that meets the requirements of most local authorities.  Some local authorities insist that the providers are totally separate organisations.  This is to protect the tenants so that if a single organisation provides both housing and care they wouldn’t become homeless if they wanted to change care provider, for example.

It is the housing provider who applies for the exempt rent and the housing provider has to have a specific status to be able to apply for exempt rents – which enables them to cover the higher costs associated with the supported sector.  A housing provider must fall under one of these categories to be able to apply for exempt rent:

• A housing association
• Not for profit voluntary organisation
• Registered charity
• An English non-metropolitan council
• And
• The care support and supervision is provided by the accommodation provider or by someone acting on behalf of the accommodation provider
• And
• The level of care, support and supervision is more than minimal

Elements of support and housing management are included in the rent and eligible costs.  Examples:

Per week

Ineligible Costs – these have to be paid by the young people – £19 per week

• Personal heating and light
• Water rates
• TV licence
• Phone/wifi

These are examples only.  There is not an exhaustive list of what can be included in rent or eligible costs.

There is some government scrutiny around exempt accommodation and the regulations but the need for additional costs for supported accommodation is not something that will go away.

Family purchase of a house for their young person:

A family can purchase a house for their young person but to be eligible for housing benefit and eligible costs they can’t rent directly to the young person.  The house would need to be leased to a housing provider and to claim the additional rent allowance and eligible costs the housing provider would need to be in one of the above categories.

If the housing provider is not in one of the above categories the additional rent and eligible costs would not be covered and therefore everything that would normally be included in these costs would have to come out of the allowable rent – or be paid for by the young person.  In this instance it is difficult to see how the family would receive a good return on their investment as the eligible costs and additional rent may well come to over £100 per person per week.  Or if the additional costs didn’t come out of the rent it is unlikely that the young person would be able to afford the accommodation.

The benefits include guaranteed accommodation for the family’s young person and a good return and guaranteed return on their investment with other young people also living in the house.  But with the housing provider being the landlord the family are removed from the immediate management of the house.

Staff recruitment in a supported living setting:

• The care agency will usually recruit the staff and then arrange for them to meet the families involved
• The care staff are employed by the care agency, not directly by the families

Therapies:

• If your young person has an EHCP and therapies are specified they will continue – in one way or another – in supported living as long as the yp is in education and the EHCP continues
• If the yp will not be in education the EHCP will cease and therapies specified in the EHCP will stop
• You, or another person, would have to make a referral to Your Healthcare for an assessment
• Therapies are not delivered in the same was as they are for under 18s and when detailed in an EHCP
• After an assessment your yp may be offered a course of therapy but it is likely to be time limited or limited to a number sessions rather than ongoing as it may have been under the EHCP