As a housing provider the association has long recognised the important role support can play in enabling people to manage their home and sustain independent living in the community.
We were confident that with the right opportunities we could deliver effective support packages which would not only promote independent living, but enable people to grow and realise their potential. The community support service has developed from a vision into reality in a short space of time and has now been in operation for more than seven years.
Our services receive funding from a variety of sources: Supporting People, Adult Social Care and other partners, such as New Charter Housing Trust.
More about community support
Having set up our first services in 2002 to incredibly tight deadlines we now work across four offices in the North-West, supporting more than 250 households and employing more than 40 support staff. We have been able to build on these firm foundations, successfully securing new contracts and expanding services. This additional growth has been achieved against a back-drop of cuts in Supporting People grants and a climate of uncertainty across the sector.
Central to our approach has been the delivery of services at a local level. With offices in Tameside, Manchester, Rochdale and Vale Royal, we are well-placed to respond to the needs of service users. Primarily we provide floating support services, but we also have some supported accommodation in Cheshire.
Our expertise in delivering support has developed over the last few years and we now work with people who have a range of issues and come from diverse backgrounds. For example, we work with:
• Asian women in Rochdale
• Elderly people who are showing early signs of dementia in Manchester
• Members of Manchester's black and minority ethnic community who have issues around mental health
• Irish men in Manchester with issues around alcohol misuse and homelessness
• Homeless families and young people at risk in Tameside and Cheshire
In practice people can not be defined by specific ‘problems’ and categorised into neat groups. Many of the people we work with have a range of problems.
During the development of the community support service, we also had to gear up to the challenges presented by Supporting People. We have had successful reviews in all areas of operation and received positive feedback on the quality of services we provide. This has been echoed by our own consultation with stakeholders. Our success in getting the services up and running and securing contracts is to a large extent attributable to the commitment of the staff who work at People First, the vision and support of the Board and the partner organisations we work with, who have provided the association with opportunities to develop new services.
Our biggest challenge now is to ensure we retain our contracts in a time of great uncertainty about funding, but we are confident we can achieve this if we ensure we continue to put ‘people first.’ This means regular consultation with service users, stakeholders and partners and working towards continuous improvement and excellence. Crucially it also means ensuring continued opportunities for our staff to develop and grow. We have built a strong base from which to develop further and ensure our continued success.