Supported living

Supported living

Supported living services are designed to help people live independently in their community. You will be supported in suitable accommodation, that may be in your own home.

What is Supported Living?

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Supported living services are designed to help people live independently in their community. You will be supported in suitable accommodation, that may be in your own home. You might have help with things like accessing things in the community or it may be help with independent living skills such as washing or shopping.

Some supported living services are shared by a few people living in the same house. They usually have staff who visit them to provide support. This can be anything from once a week to 24/7 care and support. Supported living services are only regulated by the Care Quality Commission if they provide 'regulated activities' such as providing personal care. Others are monitored by the local authority that commissions them and by the organisation themselves.

Is KeyRing a supported living service?

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KeyRing can certainly help with the things that you’d need from a supported living service like finding suitable accommodation and building independent living skills.

We are more flexible than supported living services and our key aim is to build independence so that you either do not need our support anymore or need less support.

Some local authorities commission (pay for our support) through supported living contracts and others under community support or something similar. Any local authority that works with us knows that we add a level of support that is not available through traditional supported living services.

How flexible will my support be?

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We don’t just use paid staff to deliver our support. We also use volunteers, the volunteers know the area well and the people who live there. They can help link you into the opportunities in the area as well as warn you about any concerns.

We know that the community has a lot to offer and that you have a lot to offer the community. By helping you link in we provide more levels of support, build relationships outside of support and help you take the step to independence.

The support we provide is also flexible. That means you can get support at a time and in a place that you agree with us.

What is flexible support?

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Imagine that life is running smoothly and then you find out some really bad news. We can increase your support for a few weeks to help you through this tricky time.

Flexible support means that we can adapt our support and the amount that we provide to your needs. We do this because we know that life doesn’t always run smoothly.

Another thing we are proud of at KeyRing is the way we help people to support each other. This is often called peer or mutual support.

What is peer support?

Peer or mutual support is when you help someone else to do something. It could be as simple as having a chat with a friend and giving them the benefit of personal experience. It might be helping someone with their shopping.

There are lots of different ways that people help each other all the time. KeyRing know that friendships and peer support are the key to giving you confidence in your own skills and helping you to move beyond support services.

We would much rather that people were building relationships than relying on social care services. Our support workers are amazing but everyone deserves more than just them in their lives.

How much support does KeyRing offer?

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As much or as little as you need. You can start off with lots of extra support while you get used to your new KeyRing place and then reduce your support as you find out how many things you can do without our help.

The great thing about KeyRing is that our support can change if you need us more one week. This is called flexible support.

Where do I live?

Three wooden houses

You will live in your own home.

It is very important that you are supported to obtain and maintain your own property. Whether that be private rental, housing association or owner occupied, depends on you, your circumstances and the community where you wish to live.

Everyone has their own place to live, if you decide that you would prefer to share with someone else, we can help you to do that as well. It is all down to you, the individual.

We can even support you as part of a couple or family.

What types of people can you support?

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We can support anyone that needs support to live independently or who faces barriers to living independently.

We don't really like labels as they limit what people think they can achieve but sometimes they help people understand us. So, about two thirds of the people that we support have a learning disability or learning difficulty.

We support people with mental health issues, autism, people with drug or alcohol abuse issues, people in transitions services, older people, people with a disability and people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.

Where are KeyRing's services?

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We work in around 40 local authorities across England and Wales. You can find the list of places we work in here.

If we don’t have support in your area we’d still love to hear from you so that we can let the right people know that local people are interested in our support. Please contact enquiries@keyring.org.