PREVENTING HOMELESSNESS PROVIDING OPPORTUNITIES

Floating Support Service

The Floating Support Service This service provides long-term flexible support to people who are either living in or working towards accessing their own accommodation. The support on offer is both practical and emotional, enabling people to sustain independent living within the community.

Our approach is led by the needs of service users, and allows for a flexible application of support that reflects life changes, and changes in circumstances. Move On’s approach is based on the belief that people affected by homelessness have the resources, skills and abilities to take back control over their lives.

Homelessness can result in a loss of structure in an individual’s life as well as a loss of confidence and a lowering of self-esteem. The support we offer aims to build confidence, grow self-esteem and introduce stability to the lives of our service users. Staff are skilled at building relationships with service users based on trust and mutual respect and will challenge service users where appropriate. They endeavour to give service users the skills and confidence they need, not through doing things for them, but through enabling them to act for themselves. In practice this can mean helping them to plan and prioritise, identify and talk through a possible plan of action and then practical assistance to put this plan into effect. Practical assistance may include accompanying service users, limited advocacy, building confidence through familiarisation, identifying and highlighting existing skills and identifying skill gaps and how these can be met.

Supporting service users who have often led extremely chaotic lives requires our staff and the service to be diverse and responsive to the needs of our service users. The Floating Support Service offers a service which is service user led and not set by time-scales or guided by support end dates. The Floating Support Service has clearly identified the need for flexibility and the importance of relationships built with service users over time, based on mutual trust and respect.

To view our last two Care Commission Inspection Reports go to the links page and click on Care Commission.