It is always helpful to plan ahead, if the person is of school age, these conversations may start to happen from around the age of 13 or 14, when they have their annual education health and care plan assessment (EHCP).  

If your child is an adult still living at home with you, you may also want to think about transition to independent living. There is no right or wrong time to start thinking about this, you can think about this any time.  

This will depend on the person and how long they need, how long it takes to assess and gather information about their support, what they want and how to achieve this.

It may also take time to identify suitable accommodation  and then potentially make adaptations to ensure the property is ready. Once ready, regular visits can be made if needed to help the person get used to the idea of moving there and to help ensure it is the right fit for them.  

This depends on the person. It can involve whoever is important to them and who they want to be involved. This could include, parent/carers, social workers, speech therapists, Occupational therapists, support providers, teachers and advocates.

Day Opportunities:

Sometimes called “day centres”, day opportunities provide support and activities, often recreational and educational, to people with various support needs usually on a weekday.  

The schedule and type of activity will depend on the day opportunity. Bethphage has three different day opportunities including:  

Innage Lane in Bridgnorth: featuring a tailored activity programme, which is renewed and revised on a term-time basis. This also includes a thriving social enterprise with products made and sold by the people we support to the local community. 

Our Space in Ellesmere: a lively community hub, library and day opportunity service. Our Space is a community building, with members of the local community utilising library services and events, which helps to reduce isolation and encourage/promote community connections and engagement. 

Blossom Barns in Chelmarsh: A farm-based day opportunity where people supported get involved in the everyday running of the farm including horticulture, animal care, cooking and running the onsite shop.  

Registered Care Homes:

Care homes can be helpful for people who may have more complex needs and need some extra support. This could be a steppingstone before they go onto supported living. Support in a care home is 24/7.  

Domiciliary Care (sometimes called “dom care”):

This is support provided in your own home, often with daily tasks such as meal preparation, medication, personal hygiene etc. Visits can be shorter with domiciliary care, sometimes a care worker may only be with you for 30 minutes or a couple of hours. 

Shared Lives:

Shared Lives offers people an alternative and flexible form of live-in, respite accommodation. People supported by Shared Lives will live with approved Shared Lives carers in their family home on a short term (respite) or long-term basis. 

Personal Assistants (sometimes called “PAs”):

The role of a PA will be similar to a support worker; they can support you in your home with household tasks and out and about. The difference is that a PA will be independently employed by you, rather than by the local authority, a support provider (like Bethphage) or an agency.  

Safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility, this underpins everything we do at Bethphage. 

Click here to learn more about safeguarding at Bethphage.

You should always be supported to access your health appointments and meet your health needs.  

At Bethphage, we have a registered nurse on our team as a “Health Promotion and Improvement Lead”, their role is to support staff and people we support to obtain the best health outcomes possible.  

We understand that often, people with a learning disability or autism will have built up a relationship with their family doctor, where possible, we will ensure continuity and keep you with the doctor’s surgery that is familiar to you. However, we know that sometimes this is not possible due to factors such as location. If you have to move to a new doctor’s, we will ensure this goes as smoothly as possible and support you to get to know your new surgery.  

It is now compulsory for all health and social care staff to receive “Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism” which aims to give all staff a greater understanding of learning disabilities and autism when interacting with healthcare settings.  

Assistive Technology (sometimes called “AT”) is technology that can be used to enhance independence. It might sound complicated, but there’s lots of different kinds of assistive technology, you may already use some!

One example of AT could be an Amazon Alexa that reminds someone to take their medication. Others could be fall detectors that can let someone know if a person has fallen, talking clocks, or a one cup kettle which fills your cup with enough hot water for one cup of tea or coffee with one button. 

At Bethphage, we know how important assistive technology can be, which is why we employ an “Assistive Technology Lead” who works with people we support and staff to identify where AT might help someone be more independent and implement it with them.

You will always be supported to keep in contact and see the people who matter to you.