What we do
The Avenues Trust Support Service (ATSS) offers residential support to over 200 people in small, registered care homes, providing personalised, 24-hour support services to people with complex needs, including challenging behaviour and profound and multiple learning disabilities.
We also run a registered nursing home for people who need long-term support with their mental health.
Our staff are motivated, professional and highly trained. Learning and development programmes for staff are fundamental to the way we support people.
The people we support come first and we are committed to offering the highest quality services to people, supporting them to exercise the greatest possible control to develop over time. We are realistic about people's hopes and needs and will go the extra mile to try and meet them.
Our vision is to support people to enjoy their lives within their communities, regardless of the extent of someone's disability.
Person Centred Active Support
Engagement in meaningful activities and relationships is extremely important for quality of life and, for those with learning disabilities and complex needs; engagement is dependent on the quality of support they receive from staff.
Person-centred active support is an approach to supporting people to take an active part in meaningful, everyday activities, regardless of their disability. Activities might include anything from being involved in making their meal, gardening or cleaning the bathroom to playing golf, going to the bank, visiting the theatre, or getting a job. Staff provide flexible, creative support to enable people to participate in all everyday tasks so that people have choice and control over their lives, grow in independence and become more valued members of their community.
In 2006, Avenues committed to improving the quality of life of those we support by implementing active support throughout the organisation and training all our staff in this approach.
In partnership with The Tizard Centre at the University of Kent we delivered training to all of our senior managers and six pilot services. The training resulted in some dramatic increases in terms of people's engagement in meaningful activities and choice-making along with a significant reduction in challenging behaviour.
Training has now been delivered to all staff in our Avenues Trust Support Services subsidiary and we have seen the same dramatic results across the board as were found in the six pilot services.
Quality Assurance
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) carries out regular inspections to all of our registered care homes, 98% of which are rated good or excellent. In addition, Avenues has its own quality assurance processes.
Quality assurance in Avenues is not a separate activity done in a while but a continuous process of evaluation to develop and improve the support we provide. We use a range of processes to measure outcomes which include a monthly visit by a senior manager, formal observations of staff support and engagement levels, and feedback from people who use the service and other stakeholders such as family members and professionals.
Referrals
Referrals can be made contacting the assistant to the Chief Executive of ATSS, Yvonne Spurgeon on 01732 835 721 or email Yvonne.Spurgeon@avenuesSS.org.uk.
