Stepping Out

Stepping Out Blog

Home Care and Domiciliary Care Services

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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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Understanding Autism

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What is Autism?

Autism is known as a complex developmental disability. Experts believe that Autism presents itself during the first three years of a person’s life. The condition is the result of a neurological disorder that has an effect on normal brain function, affecting development of the person’s communication and social interaction skills. People with autism have issues with non-verbal communication, a wide range of social interactions, and activities that include an element of play and/or banter.

Autism is sometimes referred to as ASD, or Autism Spectrum Disorder/Autistic Spectrum Disorder. This covers a wide range of disorders all categorised under Autism/ASD. A person with an ASD typically has difficulty with social and communication skills, however persons with Autism may not display the same issues or behaviour, the condition affects people in differing ways.

People with autism have said that the world, to them, is a mass of people, places and events which they

The three main areas of difficulty which all people with autism share are sometimes known as the ‘triad of impairments’. They are:

  • Difficulty with social communication
  • Difficulty with social interaction
  • Difficulty with social imagination. Struggle to make sense of, and which can cause them considerable anxiety.
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Young People and the Economy

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The young people of today are living in an era where around one in five young people in the UK are not in work, education or training. Youth unemployment costs the UK economy £10 million a day in lost productivity, while youth crime costs £1 billion every year.

We address this by offering practical and vocational support and courses to young people in becoming confident individuals who are physically, emotionally and socially healthy and to become responsible citizens who are able to make positive contributions to society.

We talk through experience, as we have been managing and supporting young challenging persons that have been in the care system for most of their lives as well as Young offenders on (MAPPA) Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangement’s, Sexually Harmful and young people displaying Sexualised Behaviours, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Asperger’s Syndrome  and Learning Disabilities.

Click here to view and download our outreach support brochure.

Click here to view and download our semi-independent living brochure.

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How to Prevent Placement Breakdowns

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Stepping Out has recently been inundated with referrals. Mainly, our referrals consist of young people and adults displaying severe challenging behaviour. It seems these referrals are being made after various placement breakdowns have taken place. Stepping Out continues to support the ideology that prevention is the key to ensuring a placement is successful.

Here are some Important factors to consider when choosing a provider for clients displaying severe challenging behaviour, or who have a history of repeated placement breakdown:

  • Is the house staffed 24 hours per day?
  • How many service users does the property accommodate? (less is more)
  • Does the provider have a good track record with supporting certain client types?
  • Does the placement provide professionals with regular reports and updates?
  • Is the placement cost effective?
  • Is the client receiving realistic levels of support?
  • Are the staff well trained and experienced?
  • Is the provider regulated by a specific regulatory body? (Care Quality Commission)
  • Does the provider have the right resources to meet the client’s needs?
  • Does the provider have good knowledge of reporting disclosures and safeguarding issues?
  • Does the provider have a dedicated out of hours emergency team? Is the team able to travel to a project out of hours if necessary?
  • Are you seeing positive outcomes for the service user?
  • Do you know why an incident occurred? What the triggers were? Do you know what the client’s thoughts were before and after?

Stepping Out work with various local authorities on a national scale and offer small, homely, semi-independent living projects staffed 24 hours per day and accommodate no more than 5 service users per project. Our risk assessments ensure that many incidents are prevented and our polices are continually updated in order to reduce incidents occurring.

Example Incident:
Service user alleges that his Laptop was stolen by another service user, an incident occurs causing a placement breakdown; the laptop may not have existed.

Stepping Out’s Solution:
All service users must sign a valuable belongings policy, stating their possessions, a staff member must confirm that these possessions exist. This policy is updated regularly in order for us to keep record of any new valuable items. False allegations pertaining to the loss of valuable items are greatly reduced.

Working to reduce placement breakdowns:
Usually a placement breaks down because a client is involved in an incident and or the client displays behaviour that could not be managed, reduced.

Stepping Out ensures their staff members pay regular attention to potential triggers and any patterns that may form prior to an incident. We cannot guarantee an incident will not occur, however Stepping Out will work to find out why the incident occurred, take note of the triggers and engage the client directly, we are open minded and use a relaxed approach. Our clients will be challenging and we are aware of that, therefore we must engage with them so that we are able to ascertain why the client became challenging.

Our experienced approach usually means that a client will inform us that they caused this incident because of x, y or z, they may even tell us what the exact triggers were and in most cases will highlight how regularly occurring incidents can be reduced. Making a placement with Stepping Out will ensure you know as much as possible about the client and their needs.

Types of clients we support:
Stepping Out specialises in offering small, homely, semi-independent projects to young people and adults mainly with severe challenging behaviour which usually encompasses many differing traits to include those diagnosed under the autistic spectrum disorder, generalised learning difficulties, sexualised and sexually harmful behaviour and those whom have suicidal tendencies, self-harm, gang violence, substance misuse etc.

Stepping out offers service user specific projects, the projects are also gender specific and have differing set ups, for example some of our projects will only accommodate 1 client whereas other projects can accommodate up to 5. Importantly, our main priority is to set realistic boundaries and proactively aid our clients move on to a more independent setting.

Feel free to contact us if you have a client whom you feel would benefit from our services.

0208 342 7217.

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Placement Breakdowns! Why?

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Has the placement broken down again? Why?
Young people leaving “care” at the ages of 16 + require high levels of guidance and support in order to aid them become independent and encourage social inclusion.
Stepping Out have found that many placement seem to end due to a lack of engagement and proactive support but also importantly the placement’s management methods, particularly when faced with incidents such as challenging behaviour, sometimes it’s just too easy to end a placement. Planning, risk assessing and boundary implementation are factors that must be continuously revised and worked upon.We are seeing the use of larger provisions, offering almost hostel like settings, these types of provisions work to fuel incidents particularly when you have 8-12 young people seeking to share communcal spaces and or obtain the attention of the on site staff member. In these cases more equals less. Less support, less engagement, less attention, less inclusion, and certainly less family orientated compared to the placements offered by Stepping Out.
A semi independent placement should be viewed and used as a preventative tool with the ultimate aim of helping young people reach independence.
Stepping Out’s semi independent provisions are set up to provide a small group living environment in order to provide a homely setting. The small groups allow the service users to receive targeted support and close supervision, eliminating the issues of lack of engagement whilst ensuring the client does not feel overwhelmed and or crowded. Down time/self-time is encouraged. All clients benefit from their own bedrooms, specific project offer en-suite arrangements. The projects are suitable for those whom require well-structured living options with strict boundaries. Our projects offer 24 hour on site staff in order to ensure close and regular supervision. We operate a number of provisions, these provisions offer differing arrangements and can accommodate children (14+) and or adults (18+).Stepping Out has built a great reputation for providing specialised up-to 24 hour semi-independent living options for adults and young people leaving care. The type of clients we accommodate and support have varying needs to include: Challenging behaviour, Autistic Spectrum Disorder, Sexually harmful behaviour, Sexualised behaviour, Self- Harm, Drug and alcohol misuse, learning difficulties, mental health issues and fabricated and induced illness.
We are currently taking referrals for our waiting list within our projects in Hertfordshire and Haringey, however we have a small number of vacancies within our female projects within the Enfield Borough.

For further information and or to make a referral please contact us on 0208 342 7217 or send an email to info@stepping-out.org

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