Supporting people

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Fact Sheet No:  FS19
Name of Service:  Supporting People
Abbreviation:  SP
Service Type:

About this service

The Supporting People Service helps vulnerable adults have more choice over their housing options and supports people to live independently for longer. It can provide this support through Supported Living Schemes.

What is Supporting People?

The Supporting People Team is a part of Community Services. The team works to help vulnerable adults have more choice over their housing options and supports people to live independently for longer. We can provide this support through Supported Living Schemes which offer:

• Support to people to help them learn how to keep to the terms of their agreements and avoid crisis
• Accommodation-based support as part of a tenancy where support staff are employed such as sheltered housing or shared housing
• Floating support which is usually provided for a short period of time, either to deal with a crisis or threat of homelessness.

Supporting People Client groups include:

• Older People
• Teenage Parents
• Mental Health
• Drugs and Alcohol
• Learning Disabilities
• Homelessness
• Domestic Violence

The Supporting People team, which is managed by the Supporting People Co-ordinator is made up of:

• Project Officers who review services at a strategic level identifying gaps in service in the county. Contracts Officers who set up and maintain contracts with local service providers.
• Finance Officers responsible for the Supporting People Budget
• Admin/Communication Officers who are the point of contact for Providers and Citizens they also deal with making Supporting People payments and provide support to the other members of the team

What will the Supporting People Team do?

The Supporting People team will assess an individual’s entitlement to help with their support charge. Firstly the individual will need to be living within one of the housing organisations which have a contract with Supporting People. The housing organisation will then provide the individual with an application to help with Support Charge form. This form will be sent to the Supporting People office where checks with Housing Benefits departments will be made to identify eligibility to financial help from the Supporting People programme. Individuals will be kept informed of the progress of their application and in the event of funding being entitled an agreed weekly service charge will be paid to the housing organisation.

The team will be happy to answer any queries regarding these applications for help with support charges and can be contacted via email, by telephone, fax or letter and will be happy to respond with an answer wherever possible or by signposting if the query is more applicable to be answered by another department/organisation.

For more information you can:

• Contact the Supporting People Team 01225 713733

Last updated: 15 July 2009