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New Adults Short Breaks Service

July 21, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

Adults with learning disabilities in Oxfordshire have helped to redesign a service that will offer them more choice and flexibility around their short break options.

The adult learning disability short break programme has been developed hand in hand with people who draw on the service, as well as their families and carers, through a process called coproduction. It will offer traditional building-based stays as well as more flexible community-based solutions.

Councillor Tim Bearder, Oxfordshire County Council’s Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care, said: “Caring for loved ones can be extremely rewarding but it can also be tiring work. Short breaks is an important service commissioned by the council, offering adults with learning disabilities some additional support in a different environment while giving carers the chance to rest and recharge.

“By working with people who draw on the service, we’ve heard that our traditional building-based option isn’t right for everyone. That’s why we’ve introduced a more flexible, hybrid system, giving people the opportunity to choose what’s right for them”.

With the support of organisations including My Life, My Choice and Oxfordshire Family Support Network, the adults’ short breaks service has been completely redesigned, helping to put people with learning disabilities in control of their support options.

Building-based stays will still be available and by reducing the number of properties from four to three, the council can increase the outreach offer and flexibility of the service to more individuals. There will be refurbishments made to the three facilities, where the decisions around the future improvements, including the design and décor, will be made with the adults who use the service.

Running alongside this, a new option will be available offering support in line with the council’s Oxfordshire Way vision to support more people to live well and independently within their own communities.

By listening to the people and carers who use the short breaks service, the council has committed to further strengthening the relationships people have found closer to home, giving people access to services which provide the greatest value to them. This includes daytime and outreach support which can be delivered at home or in the community.

Gail Hanrahan, Programme Manager at Oxfordshire Family Support Network, said: “We are pleased to have been part of coproducing and codesigning the adult short breaks service, which we hope will offer greater choice and flexibility for the families we support and their loved ones.”

Oxfordshire County Council will begin the refurbishment of the building-based services shortly, with a view to having all the improvements made by spring 2025. Due to a reduction in the number of people using building-based stays, it will be possible to continue running this service from the additional buildings while the refurbishments are taking place.

The council will begin the process of inviting organisations to bid to provide the new services, with the contract due to start in April 2025. The current service will continue unchanged until that point.

Filed Under: News, OxFSN Articles

Care Act 2014 – Top Tips for Family Carers

March 5, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

View and download OxFSN’s presentation about The Care Act 2014 and the Top Tips for family carers.


Care-Act-Embolden-2-Presentation-February-2024Download

Filed Under: Publications, Resources

Upcoming Events for 2025

January 31, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

Filed Under: Events, News

Healthwatch Survey – Paying for social care

March 16, 2020 By OxFSN Webmaster

What is this about?
In 2018, Oxfordshire County Council did a review of its policy on what people pay towards their social care. These payments (called “contributions”) help to pay for social care services to help you in your daily life. After the review, your weekly payment towards the cost of these services may or may not have changed.

We would like to hear from you about your experiences of this process and how any changes to your weekly payment have affected you and those who support you.

Who we are and what are we asking for
Healthwatch Oxfordshire is an independent charity and is not part of the Council. We are here to help make sure that the voices of people who use support services are heard. We will use the information you provide us to tell the County Council what you think and to influence how it reviews policies in the future.

To participate in the Healthwatch Oxfordshire: Paying for your social care survey, follow the link to https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/SNKQS/

Filed Under: News Archive, OxFSN Articles

Life Long Caring

June 5, 2019 By OxFSN Webmaster

em·bold·en

(funded by Comic Relief)

Few of us will not at some point in our life take on the role of carer for a family member. For the majority of us it is usually an elderly parent or a spouse.

There is, however, a group of people whose caring role often goes unnoticed. Who fall under our radar as not only are they silently getting on with their caring role, and have done so for all of their life, but unless we know someone in a similar situation – we often are not aware that they even exist.

These are the Family Carers whose child is born with a learning disability and who, as a result, spend their life battling, fighting, negotiating and supporting their son or daughter to lead as normal life as possible.

Through the OxFSN Embolden Project, funded by Comic Relief, we work with older family carers to give this seldom heard group of people a collective voice in order to influence and hold decision makers to account.

Equally important is the need to highlight those individual family carers, some of whom are in their 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s, who are still supporting their family member, some who are still living at home and some who are living out of county.

This small exhibition aims to give each family carer or carers their own unique voice but also to show that whatever the circumstances of their family member, the family carer cannot step back and ‘retire’. Each story gives an insight in to the range of support and involvement they have given and continue to do so.

We would like to thank each of these family carers for allowing us to share their own individual and personal stories. They reflect the range of emotions that comes with raising a child with a learning disability – the hopes, the fears, the uncertainty and best of all the joy and laughter that each and everyone brings.

To us they are the unsung heroes who have fought to ensure that their ‘child’ is given the same recognition that we want for any of our children but have unselfishly dedicated all their life to doing so.

We would like to dedicate this exhibition to Alexandra Scott-Hunter and Tony Purkis who both sadly passed away after the photographs of their relatives were taken.
 
To read the full stories click on each individual photograph in the image gallery below:

With special thanks to Sara Ryan for providing the photographs of our family carers.

The photographs and carers’ Life Long Caring stories are currently on display at Oxfordshire County Council County Hall during the month of June 2019.

For further information contact Kathy Liddell, em·bold·en Project Administrator.

 

Filed Under: Media, News, OxFSN Articles, Publications, Resources

REACH – Reflections on Supported Living today

April 4, 2019 By OxFSN Webmaster

REACH Standards – constantly aspire for better Reflections on Supported Living today.

The Radio 4 programme, File on 4 on 12 February 2019 looked at supported living and what the increases in unexplained deaths and serious injuries mean for those living in supported living environments. At LDE we believe that institutionalisation can happen in any setting if strong values and principles are not driving how the support is designed and delivered. Good https://epilepsy.wales/kamagra-sildenafil care and support cannot be achieved when economic factors rather than the people supported have come to dominate the shape of available care models…

To read more follow this link: REACH – Reflections on Supported Living today

Filed Under: Publications, Resources

Family Investment in Supported Housing

January 23, 2019 By OxFSN Webmaster

Follow link to: A guide for people who want to purchase property for family members with disabilities to live in.

Family_Invest_in_Supported_Housing-PROOF-1

Filed Under: Publications, Resources

OxFSN Supported Living Event – 20/June/2024 – Presentation

July 10, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

OxFSN Supported Living Event – June 20th 2024 – Presentation slides in PDF format.

OxFSN-Supported-Living-Event-June-20th-2024Download

Filed Under: Publications, Resources

Online event: Office of the Public Guardian

May 5, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

Filed Under: Events Archive

Online event: Tips on cleaning teeth

March 14, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

Filed Under: Events Archive

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Featured Articles

New Adults Short Breaks Service

July 21, 2024 By OxFSN Webmaster

Adults with learning disabilities in Oxfordshire … [Read More...]

Challenging Financial Assessment Contribution Charging Policy

June 27, 2023 By OxFSN Webmaster

If you support someone who has had a financial … [Read More...]

The Moving Into Adulthood Handbook

November 16, 2022 By OxFSN Webmaster

The Moving Into Adulthood HandbookThis handbook is … [Read More...]

OxFSN Q & A on Supported Living: What do you need to know?

November 29, 2021 By OxFSN Webmaster

An overview of Supported Living in Oxfordshire and … [Read More...]

Resources

OxFSN Supported Living Event – 20/June/2024 – Presentation

Care Act 2014 – Top Tips for Family Carers

What is an Integrated Care Board?

The Moving Into Adulthood Handbook

Questions for family carers to ask support providers

Adult Social Care Act Needs Assessment

Family Investment in Supported Housing

OxFSN Supported Living Q & A

Learning Disability and or Autism Crisis Care Plan

OxFSN Supported Living Checklist

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