About Plymouth Partnership Supporting People

• What is Supporting People?
• What is Housing Related Support?
• What sort of things does the Supporting People Service do?
• What services do Plymouth Supporting People fund?
• Who can access Supporting People Services?
• How are local needs determined?
• What Supporting People cannot fund
• How is the programme overseen?

What is Supporting People?

Supporting People is a Government programme. It enables Local Authorities to fund services that provide housing related support. The needs of vulnerable people are identified locally, and support is targeted to enable vulnerable people to move towards or maintain their independence in accommodation. This support helps people to develop a stable environment, from which they can avoid problems that can lead to hospitalisation, institutional care or homelessness. It is therefore essential to the aims of other agencies like health, social care, housing and community safety.

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What is Housing Related support?

Housing related support is specifically linked to helping people to either stay in their own home, or to move towards being able to live in their own home. Generally, it means helping the individual to do things for themselves, rather than bringing in a service to do things for them.

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What sort of things does the Supporting People Service do?

• Helps to develop life skills, such as understanding a tenancy agreement, budgeting and cooking, that will enable people to live by themselves. This might apply equally to a teenage mother working towards her own accommodation, or a to a widowed older person now managing a home independently for the first time.
• Offers support to access services and benefits. This might include helping an ex-offender to register with utilities and health services as she settles into the community, or helping to ensure that an older person is claiming his benefits.
• Offers support to access training and employment. This might include helping a young person enter work for the first time, or helping a person with learning difficulties move into further education.
• Offers support through warden and/or alarm services. This assists independence through reassurance that help can be called if needed, and might be either a system within sheltered accommodation or a community alarm for a person in their own home. These are often associated with support for older people, but can be used much more broadly - including, for example, to support a woman resettling in the community after experiencing domestic violence.

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What services do Plymouth Supporting People fund?

Full information about services available in Plymouth is detailed in the Service Directory.

Services funded in Plymouth include:

• the Mother and Baby Unit - helping teenage mums develop independent living skills
• Plymouth Foyer - supporting young people to access training and education
• The Ship Hostel - helping people who are homeless to develop the skills they need to avoid homelessness in the future
• Plymouth Women’s Refuge and Womens Aid - helping women escaping from domestic violence to resettle following a crisis situation
• Plymouth Independent Living - helping people with disabilities to gain independent living skills.

Services can be provided either within supported housing - where support is provided within accommodation in which service users stay temporarily - or floating support - that is support which is provided to people within their own homes, wherever they live or move to.

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Who can access Supporting People Services?

People who may be vulnerable for a variety of reasons can access services. This includes those listed below, though the list is not exhaustive.

• Have been or are homeless or rough sleeping
• Have been previously imprisoned or are at risk of offending or re-offending
• Have a mental health problem
• Have a learning disability
• Are at risk of domestic violence
• Teenage parents
• Have a drug and/or alcohol problem
• Have a physical and/or sensory disability
• Have HIV or AIDS
• Refugees
• Being vulnerable due to age - either older people, or young people including those who are leaving care.

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How are local needs determined?

Service users, and potential service users are consulted in a variety of different ways about what services they think should be provided, and information is gathered from organisations in the city about things like demand for services, unmet needs, and development priorities. This is then used by the Supporting People Commissioning Body (made up of representatives from social services, housing, health, Probation Services, and elected Council Members) to decide how and where monies should be spent. Full information regarding service priorities and needs assessment by client group is available in the Supporting People 5 Year Plan, which can be downloaded from our Documents page.

If you have views about what housing related support services are needed, and want to get involved in future consultations, then please contact the Supporting People Team.

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What Supporting People cannot fund:

Supporting People cannot fund things that already receive statutory funding – things like health care or personal care (help to wash, dress etc). Services cannot be provided for people who live in residential care or in hospital.

Supporting People does not have the resources to fund everything, and therefore has to prioritise services that will receive funding. This is done by asking service users to tell us what sort of services they need, and by consulting with other agencies in the city. For more information about consultation with service users and other agencies, see the Supporting People 5 year plan, which can be downloaded from our Documents page.

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How is the programme overseen?

It is important that the Supporting People programme harnesses a broad range of skills, knowledge and resources from different service areas to make sure it is effectively linked into key city aims.

The Commissioning Body is a partnership of senior representatives from housing, social care, probation, Primary Care Trust, and elected Council Members, with decision-making powers about the development and direction of the programme. Minutes of recent Core Strategy Group meetings can be downloaded from the Supporting People Minutes page.

The Core Strategy Group makes recommendations to the Commissioning Body. It has broader membership than the Commissioning Body, being potentially open to all key partners, including internal and external providers. This group is made up of operational managers, and is responsible for analysing information about needs, bringing information and expertise about their particular service areas/user groups, developing shared targets and performance indicators, and identifying opportunities for programme development. Minutes of recent Core Strategy Group meetings can be downloaded from the Supporting People Minutes page.

Elected members are responsible for ensuring that Supporting People is well integrated into local plans for housing, social care, education, employment and regeneration – and for making sure that connections are made between Supporting People and other local programmes. They also have a key role to play in informing the programme about the needs of vulnerable people and the experiences of people who use the services, using their local ward knowledge.

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