info@Independenceway.co.uk
PHONE
07888 710 005
info@Independenceway.co.uk
07888 710 005
Are you looking for a caring and peaceful home for your young people?
Do you want a placement where staff are patient and professional?
A placement where your young people are treated with respect and dignity?
A placement where hope will be ignited in those young people who may have given up or be about to give up on life?
A placement where your young people will be guarded and supported in order to fulfil their potential?
A placement that will help relieve the work- load of your social workers?
You don’t need to look any further. As the name suggests, Independence Way is a semi-independent provider of accommodation and bespoke support services for 16 to 18 year olds. At Independence Way, quality support and guidance, in a caring and safe environment, is the standard norm. We encourage our young people to aim high and to develop a positive mind-set towards life.
We invest great effort to ensure that our service users enjoy the best experience possible. We value their interests and invite their contributions to help shape the services we provide. We believe that this is the only way we can ensure that we are serving their best interests which is our ultimate goal.
We understand the challenges that come with being a teenager and, with appropriate communication and collaboration with other agencies and professionals, we have been able to help many of our clients, some of whom once had no life plans or ambition, develop into independent and productive adult members of society.
Independence Way recognises that each young person is different and consequently they have different needs which require different types or levels of support. We have, therefore, developed two broad levels of support for our young persons – general and bespoke.
This refers to the whole wide range of support that we provide to all our young persons and their social workers. This includes, but is not limited to, the following:
We support our young persons in order that they are able to develop and maintain essential skills such as cooking and following a balanced diet, cleaning (including maintaining a clean and tidy bedroom), laundry, budgeting, shopping (including finding real bargains), achieving a good personal hygiene standard and a healthy lifestyle generally.
We help our service users set realistic goals (where none have been properly articulated) and motivate them to accomplish set targets.
We ensure that we register our service users with doctors, dentists and opticians as needed and that they get all necessary health checks. We also accompany our young persons to medical appointments as and when due. In some cases we would provide supervision to ensure that the service users take their medication as recommended by the experts.
We work with relevant professionals to ensure that our young person’s get the optimum opportunity to be the best they can be in life by helping them access appropriate educational and apprenticeship programmes. We even support those in education by assisting with homework.
We have a computer with fibre optic internet access for the use of our young persons. So, whether they want to improve their IT skills, source material for their academic exercises, improve their English language abilities, search for a job or simply play games, our young people can do all of these activities in the comfort of their own home.
We ensure that we register our young people at the local library as soon as they settle in their placement. This ensures that they have access to books and all the other resources the library can offer which we are unable to provide at home.
Where a young person needs help with job applications, CV writing, accessing benefits and allowances, we make sure we offer every practical support we can and where the support of external agencies is required, we point the young person in the right direction.
We send a monthly report regarding the progress each young person is making in placement to their named social worker. The report also highlights areas of concern or those where we are perhaps experiencing challenges as well as the setting of new targets.
In the event of a major incident or accident, we would inform the named social worker as soon as possible. Therefore social services are not taken by surprise if, for example, the police or media contact them regarding such an event.
From time to time we organise different types of fun activities for our service users. We also maintain comprehensive and up-to-date information about places in the community where our young people can engage in social and sporting activities that are safe and age appropriate.
We hold regular monthly house meetings with our young people where minutes are recorded. This venue provides an opportunity for our young people to express their views about every aspect of their experience in the house. As a provider of quality service, we take these meetings very seriously.
Independence Way has a Tenants’ Handbook that comprehensively spells out the rights of our young persons, our expectations of them, how to conduct themselves in emergency situations, important phone numbers and complaints procedures amongst other information.
Our Policies and Procedures Handbook covers all areas of quality assurance such as Code of Conduct, Equality and Diversity policy, Health and Safety procedures, Fire Evacuation procedures, Safeguarding Policy, Lone Working Policy, Missing Child policy, Substance Misuse policy, Out of Hours Procedures, Child Sexual Exploitation Policy and Complaints procedures.
We tailor certain services to suit some service users based on their assessed needs or level of risk. This category includes, but is not limited to, the following:
These young people, separated from their family, friends and way of life, often in the most violent and traumatic fashion, suddenly find themselves in England. Most of them, new to the country, have very little or no knowledge of English language and therefore need help and support with virtually all everyday activities. We gladly welcome these people, make them as comfortable as possible, offer them every support we can provide in-house and, working with other stakeholders, we try to identify any professional help they might need and ensure that they can access them.
We refer our young asylum seekers who have lost contact with family members and who are eager to trace them to the British Red Cross family tracing unit who have been very helpful in such matters. We also encourage these young people to take advantage of other activities such as social evenings organised by the Red Cross. These activities generally promote social interaction and community integration through music, dance, games, cookery and so forth.
In cases where a young person is assessed to have complex behavioural challenges, we would provide an enhanced level of support. This category of service users includes young people with violent or abusive behaviours or substance misuse/abuse issues and young people with a history of self-harming. Others in this category are those who have been assessed to be vulnerable to sexual exploitation, suspects or convicts of sexual offences and other criminal or anti-social behaviours. Some of these cases would require 1-1 or even 2-1 round the clock monitoring to reduce the risk of self-harm or harm to other service users.