Providing respite

St Anne’s Community Services has been providing support to a wide range of people throughout the north since 1971, through services such as the Brambles, which offers regular respite to six people at any one time

Summing up what services such as the Brambles mean to the people who use them in a few words is difficult but 19-year-old Jason gave the organisation a glowing accolade in a powerpoint presentation to the board of St Anne’s Community Services about his experiences of respite provision.

“The Brambles means the world to me and I’m glad I got the chance to go there for respite as it helped me sort my head out,” he said. Launched last year, it is one of three respite services provided by St Anne’s Community Services. It is accommodated in a six-bedded purpose-built bungalow developed by South Yorkshire Housing Association and nursing care is provided for people with learning disabilities and complex health needs.

David Blondin, who manages the service, says: “Having purpose built accommodation that has been developed with the nursing needs of the guests considered throughout is brilliant. It helps the guests settle in and enables the staff to provide care and support safely.”

This is the first partnership arrangement between St Anne’s Community Services and South Yorkshire Housing Association but St Anne’s does have long established partnership arrangements with a number of other housing associations across the Yorkshire and Humber and North East regions. This complements the accommodation which is provided directly by St Anne’s Community Services as a supported housing provider.

“Providing respite is an essential part of providing critical support to families and carers who have a member of their family with a learning disability,” says a spokesperson for St Anne’s. “It enables the family to have a break from their responsibilities of providing 24-hour care for their loved one and is also a positive opportunity for the person with a learning disability to spend time in a different environment, promoting their independence.”

Having now been open over four years Glenholme, in Calderdale, is the first respite service that St Anne’s Community Services was commissioned to provide. The accommodation is owned by the local authority and could not be more different from the purpose built accommodation of The Brambles.

The rambling old house offers a larger service, catering for a maximum of 14 guests at any one time but providing the same lifeline for people with a learning disability and their families. Karen Parrish, manager of Glenholme says: “We are absolutely thrilled that the quality of our service provision has been recognised by the Care Quality Commission who has rated our service as providing excellent outcomes.

This is a brilliant testament to our dedicated staff and management team who work tirelessly to provide the best possible service for our guests.”

Shady Trees is the third of the respite services provided by St Anne’s and is owned and managed by the organisation. The small bungalow provides a service for four guests at any one time. Manager Elaine Littlewood says: “We know what a vital service this is for families and carers. We were delighted to receive a collective compliment from families attending a carers meeting, on how well the service was going and that the transition from the previous service had been very good.”

Having developed considerable expertise and receiving very positive feedback from guests and their families, St Anne’s Community Services is looking for further opportunities to develop respite provision across the north of England.

A different type of respite is provided as part of the organisation’s Shared Lives adult placement scheme whereby people who need care and support are matched with a family or carer and live with them in their home. T he carers are carefully recruited and provided with comprehensive training before they begin caring for someone as part of their household.

St Anne’s Community Services Shared Lives scheme in Leeds was launched in 1992 and has been awarded an excellent outcome rating by the Care Quality Commission. “Just as families caring for a relative with a learning disability need breaks from time to time, so do the fantastic people we recruit as carers on to the Shared Lives scheme,” explains Martin Ewing who manages the scheme. “Respite carers enable our full-time carers to have a well-earned break or to take some time out for themselves and we really appreciate people who apply to become respite carers on the scheme.”

Ewing is chair of NAAPS (National Association of Adult Placement Services) which is a charity set up to represent the interests of people involved in providing very small, individualised, community-based services such as Shared Lives.

These four different services and four different housing and accommodation arrangements exemplify the approach that St Anne’s Community Services takes to providing services for people with care and support needs.

Working with people with a learning disability, people with mental health needs, substance use issues or who are homeless, St Anne’s Community Services is committed to flexible and innovative approaches that are always based on person centred approaches.

“Our mission statement is: ‘provide quality housing, care and support; promote dignity, independence, opportunity and inclusion,” says Sharon Allen, chief executive, who is proud of the staff who work for St Anne’s doing just that in a wide range of ways. Partnership working, with other housing associations, as well as partners in the voluntary and statutory sectors is an essential element of St Anne’s Community Services approach to service provision.

The most important partnerships for St Anne’s are those with the people the organisation supports and their families and carers.

Involving people in as many ways as possible has always been at the heart of St Anne’s and this includes having people who use services on the organisation’s Board. “Having clients on the Board, bringing their knowledge and expertise of using the services St Anne’s provides has been invaluable,” says Allen. “We have recently recruited some new client Board members as we recognise that this area is just as important as having people with other specialist technical knowledge and expertise. I t also fits with our second core principle which is about the people we support being at the centre of everything we do.”

The Board also benefits from the insights of a carer, the father of someone who St Anne’s supports. Having people on the Board is just one of the many and varied opportunities for people to have a real involvement in the way St Anne’s works. As well as local service meetings, a range of client forums operate throughout St Anne’s including ‘Insight’ a group that meets quarterly with Allen to hear about the Board’s work and to discuss a range of issues. The Board holds regular Focus Groups with clients to hear their views of St Anne’s directly and the Big Event is the annual client conference.

For Allen none of this work would be possible without the dedicated and committed staff working for St Anne’s in a variety of roles and locations. “Our staff are brilliant, totally focused on providing person
centred approaches and always thinking about how they can make things better for the people they support,” she says.

And it is the dedication of those staff that allows St Anne’s services to make such a huge impact on the lives of people such as Jason.