Stepping Out Blog

Home Care and Domiciliary Care Services

Stepping Out Home Care and Domiciliary Care

Stepping Out is a registered and regulated (CQC) social care provider delivering person centred care services to clients meeting the range of low through to critical high support, high supervision needs.

Stepping Out has built a great reputation for providing specialised support and care packages to clients whom display severe challenging behaviour.

The type of clients we accommodate and support have varying needs to include:

  • Autistic Spectrum Disorders
  • Mental Health Issues
  • Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder or ADHD
  • Borderline Personality Disorder
  • Challenging Behaviour
  • Moderate Learning Disabilities/ Learning difficulties
  • Physical Disabilities
  • Schizophrenia
  • Sexually Harmful Behaviour
  • Sexualised Behaviour
  • Drug & alcohol abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal tendencies
  • Fabricated & Induced Illness
  • Auditory Hallucinations
  • Command Hallucinations
  • Delusional Ideation
  • Early onset Dementia
  • Dementia
  • Dual Diagnosis

Nature of Service:

Stepping Out is a specialist care and support service providing high level support and supervision. We are able to offer personalised services to clients with early on-set dementia and other issues to include learning difficulties, and mental health. We aim to aid our clients regain lost skills and abilities and promote their independence and dignity.

Service values:

We are passionate about empowering and involving service users: We actively support Service Users to:

  • Communicate their choice in all stages of service development from assessment through to service delivery and beyond.
  • Maximise their potential; building on strengths and meet individual needs towards independence and autonomy, choice and control.
  • Be an active member of the community if desired.
  • Make informed decisions and take positive risks.
  • Achieve better outcomes, ensuring a balance of needs and wants are met.
  • Identify what’s truly important and provide encouragement to actively live by those values.
  • Develop a healthy respect for self and others.
  • Develop self-confidence, self-worth and interpersonal skills.
  • Develop trust in others and share relevant information within the bounds of confidentiality.

Aims & Objectives

The Stepping Out Home Care service’s main aims and objectives are as follows:

  • To provide a broad range of person centred services that meet the diverse needs of our customers to maximise control, choice independence and autonomy.
  • To promote and improve quality of life for individuals.
  • Our service is tailored to meet the individual requirements of the service user in order to maintain maximum quality of life and normality in their own home.
  • Protect the rights and promote the interests of service users.
  • Promote the independence of people who use our services while protecting them as far as possible from danger and harm.
  • We aim to work persistently with the community to ensure universal services are increasingly geared up to meet peoples personalised needs.

Delivery of Service:

Our person centred support teams aim to aid clients maintain independence and ensure they are able to remain within their own homes for as long as possible. Below are some of the main areas our staff members strive to teach, reduce, explore and or support a client achieve.

  • Support with Daily Hygiene Routines
  • Support with food Preparation
  • Support with maintaining a clean and safe living environment
  • Support with Food & Grocery Shopping
  • Support with attending leisure & health activities
  • Support with family contact
  • Religious & cultural needs & preferences
  • Support with reducing substance & alcohol abuse
  • Safety & self-harm reduction + safeguarding
  • Daily reflective support on conduct & behaviour
  • Managing Incidents
  • Support with socialising and community integration
  • Support with attending appointments
  • Support with or to maintain independent skills
  • help increase self-esteem and confidence in order to reach their full potential
  • Discuss Support options available:

Initially and importantly a client should be thoroughly informed of the support options available, this includes the differing types of support Stepping Out offers but also information pertaining to local opportunities, activities and services, this may include healthcare services and or local shopping malls, parkland, job opportunities or local day centres.

Each client should be treated and supported in a personalised manner. Active listening to be employed at all times by our staff members to ensure we are fully able to record the opinion, wishes and preferences the client may have.

Once we have established a clear idea of the type of support and or care the client needs and wants we must then begin to devise a bespoke support plan.

Communicate and alleviate fears:

Communication is important; some clients may feel that they do not require care or support. It is paramount that the relevant staff member actively listens to the client, takes note of any fears and or anxieties and seeks to guide, discuss and reassure.

The client should be given time to fully discuss their care plan and make suggestions, amendment and or improvements throughout their care. Effectively Communicate, goals, tasks and plans:

Planning is an important step in order to ensure a client receives the correct levels of support whilst ensuring the support is administered in a personalised manner. Planning begins before and throughout a client’s care plan. Goals and tasks may be set by the clients with the aid of their support worker. For example it may be decided that a client will devise a weekly, monthly and yearly goal setting plan. The plans may be as basic as deciding which days they’d prefer to carry out their food and grocery shopping, in addition a goal may be set to visit a particular destination or visit a city abroad. Setting such plans alongside the clients care plan allows the client to feel fully in control of their care and helps reduce anxieties, the plans are also useful for clients with dementia whom require a document to aid them remember their plans and goals.

Risk Assessment:

A thorough risk assessment should be carried out and agreed upon by all relevant parties, the client, family members, service manager and relevant professionals before confirming a particular task or activity. A separate risk assessment should also be carried out pertaining to the client’s home and the support and care provided around the home.

Are you interested in discussing the options Stepping Out makes available pertaining to placing a client within our supported living or semi-independent living provisions?

Maybe you’d like to discuss how we could provide outreach and or home care services to your clients, friends or family members?

Contact us today on 0208 342 7217 or send an email to info@stepping-out.org

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New Provision

New Provision

Stepping Out have recently procured a ground floor two bedroom property within the Hertfordshire Borough (Broxbourne EN10) Located just 5 Minutes North of junction 25 of the M25 Motorway and East of the Great Cambridge Road A10, Being a short Walk from Broxbourne Train Station which links to Moorgate in London as well as connections to Underground stations for the Piccadilly and Victoria lines.

The provision is ideal for those whom have been diagnosed under the Autistic Spectrum Disorder, have Learning Disabilities and or Early On-Set Dementia. The provision can be staffed up to 24 hours per day on a 1-1 or 2:1 ratio.

To register your interest please contact us as soon as possible on 020 8342 7217.

 Early Onset Dementia Services
Stepping Out provide a specialist Dementia care and support service. We offer high levels of support and supervision via 24 hour staffed semi-independent living projects. We are able to offer personalised services to clients with early on-set dementia, in order to aid them regain lost skills and abilities with the main aim of promoting independence and dignity.

Visual tools such as picture cards (examples below) and other interactive communication aids are used in order to ensure effective communication, as we understand that those with Dementia often struggle to communication effectively. Additionally we recognize that challenging behaviour can also be a result of Dementia, thus, we ensure our staff are both experienced and trained in order to suitably manage such situations.

Additional support based on our travel training program can be put in to place in order to maintain and or seek to build on the clients independent travel skills.

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Dementia: The Next Global Health Time-bomb.

Dementia should be made a top health priority on a par with cancer and lung disease, a leading expert has said, after it was described as the next global “time bomb”. Professor Peter Piot, former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations, compared dementia to the AIDs epidemic and said one person is diagnosed with the mental illness every seven seconds.

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Home Care in Hertfordshire

Stepping Out can provide home care (sometimes known as domiciliary care, live-in care & outreach support) throughout the county of Hertfordshire.

Home care is one of the fundamental services provided by Stepping Out. We offer bespoke care and support packages, customised upon your assessed needs.

Domiciliary care helps you maintain your independence, privacy and lifestyle, whilst enjoying your time in the community. Having your own dedicated carer accompanying you on shopping trips & appointments can help restore confidence, maintain ad even enhance your lifestyle. You can choose to recive care for any duration of time, from half an hour, all the way up to 24 hour care.

Stepping Out can provide Home Care & outreach support in the following areas within Hertfordshire:

  • Watford
  • Stevenage
  • Hemel Hempstead
  • St Albans
  • Royston
  • Potters Bar
  • Welwyn
  • Ware

As well as a host of other areas within Herts.

To find out more about our Home Care Services in Hertfordshire, contact us via phone: 0208 342 7217 or email: info@stepping-out.org

 

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Early Onset Dementia

Dementia and its symptoms

Dementia’ is a term used to describe the symptoms that occur when the brain is affected by specific diseases and conditions.  It is an umbrella term used to describe the effects of closely linked diseases. These include Alzheimer’s disease and sometimes are the result of a stroke. Dementia is progressive, which means the symptoms will gradually get worse. How fast dementia progresses will depend on the individual. Each person is unique and will experience dementia in their own way. There are approximately 750,000 people in the UK with dementia.

Symptoms and how we can help

Below are just some of the symptoms that our service will manage and seek to reduce where possible:

  • Loss of memory − this particularly affects short-term memory, for example forgetting what happened earlier in the day, not being able to recall conversations, being repetitive or forgetting the way home from the shops. Long-term memory is usually still quite good.

Stepping Out offers the client regular guidance, support and prompts; the semi-independent project will provide a 24 hour on site staff member whom is able to offer timely aid. In General the regular use of planning documents such as weekly activity plans, shopping lists, goal setting plans, timetables, visual image based tool etc. will aid the client remember important tasks. The plans can be posted around the client’s private living area in order to aid the client’s memory.

  • Communication -The person with dementia will experience increasing problems understanding what is being said to them and what is going on around them. They are likely to find it difficult to communicate with other people. They may gradually lose their speech.

Stepping Out ensure its staff members receive regular training on effective communication, where they are able to understand a client’s feelings via certain behaviour and or body language, eye contact and tone of voice. Our staff are trained to actively listen to clients whilst positioning themselves accordingly as to not cause any distress, tension or anxiety to the client. Visual tools and other interactive communication aids are to be used in order to ensure effective communication. Staff members must employ patience and always ensure they communicate with respect towards the client.

  • Challenging Behaviour – The person with dementia may display puzzling and or at times challenging behaviour this may be in the form of physical aggression or verbal abuse.

Our staff members receive regular training on managing challenging behaviour. Importantly a client with dementia may display challenging behaviour due to feeling distressed, anxious and or frustrated. At such times, staff members must provide proactive, dedicated 1-1 support and use communication methods best suited to the client in order to alleviate the client’s anxieties. Various rules and boundaries have been put in to place that clients must adhere to. Our Company operates a no physical contact/physical intervention policy. This means we will not physically restrain and or challenge a client. If the clients behaviour becomes aggressive and or unmanageable and once we have exhausted all means of calming and effectively communicating with the client, our staff members are instructed to contact the local police whom will work to stabilise the clients behaviour.  The client will be made aware of this and will be introduced to our project rules and the boundaries that must be adhered to on initial placement with of course regular reminders.

Stepping Out is a registered and regulated (CQC) independent social care provider delivering person centred care services to children, young people and adults meeting the range of low through to critical high support, high supervision needs.Stepping Out has built a great reputation for providing specialised up-to 24 hour semi-independent living options for adults and young people.

We provide Services to:

The type of clients we accommodate and support have varying needs to include:

  • Autistic Spectrum Disorders
  • Mental Health Issues
  • Attention Deficit Hyper Activity Disorder
  • Borderline Personality Disorder
  • Challenging Behaviour
  • Moderate Learning Disabilities
  • Physical Disabilities
  • Schizophrenia
  • Sexually Harmful Behaviour
  • Sexualised Behaviour
  • Drug & alcohol abuse
  • Self-harm
  • Suicidal tendencies
  • Auditory Hallucinations
  • Command Hallucinations
  • Delusional Ideation
  • Early onset Demen
  • Dual Diagnosis
  • Dementia
  • Fabricated & Induced Illness

In order to make a referral and or to obtain further information about our company please contact us using the information provided below:

Stepping Out, 439 Green Lanes, London, N4 1HA

020 8342 7217

Info@stepping-out.org

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