Gloriously Ordinary Sundays - 13th October 2024

I’m away this week in lovely Kefalonia – the first time I’ve been away since both kids have been living in their own homes. I reflected as I got on the plane, that I feel absolutely fine about being 1500 miles away for ten days, and I know that any parent reading this will understand the power of that feeling.

Last week I shared my niggle about social workers both embracing Gloriously Ordinary Lives and also finding a real tension between it and the (perceived?) realities of the role. I said that my personal experience had been different, and I wanted to explore today how The Boy’s social worker worked with us to enable him to get his own place.

The Boy’s social worker was called James (his real name. I hope he’s reading) and when we first met a couple of years ago, he was newly qualified. I confess to a mixed reaction that fell somewhere between, ‘Fantastic he’ll still be able to see possibility’ and ‘How old is he???’ I’m a terrible person.

I’ve counted up, and in the nearly 20 years that The Boy has lived with me, we have had eight social workers, bringing a range of relationships from the sublime to the ridiculous. I quickly knew that James was right up there in the sublime category.

The first thing that struck me was his starting point. When we first met, he asked both me and The Boy what we wanted. He didn’t start with, ‘What we usually do is...' That was huge. I challenge any council worker reading this to tell me that the usual route for a learning-disabled / autistic young person is not ‘supported living’. I use the inverted commas intentionally and 20 feet high, because generally what we mean by supported living is 3, 4, 5 or 6 people living together, often with people they don’t know, each apparently with a tenancy, with shared support – that might, or might not include some ‘one-to-one’ hours. Bryony Shannon there’s a blog there for you, please.

Because James started by asking what we wanted, The Boy was able to say, very clearly, that he wanted to live on his own and that he wanted to move out as soon as possible. James asked lots of good questions to check out that this really was what The Boy wanted and then agreed that this was what we were looking for. He then asked who the important people in The Boy’s life were and made time to listen to them and, more importantly, trust in what they knew. He got really clear about our bottom lines, and evidenced the need for them: ‘What would happen if we didn’t do that?’ I think this was his real genius.

He pulled this all together into the best Care Act Assessment I’ve ever seen. It starts with who The Boy is and what makes him tick – and his aspirations, including living on his own. It then gives a clear picture of what a good life looks like and (accepting the constraints of the Care Act domains) uses that as the basis for assessment. He built a picture of The Boy as a whole person; clear about what he can do and honest about what support he needs. I’m guessing that’s what we call a strengths-based conversation?

One really specific thing that he did beautifully, was make the case to panel (oh yes, he had to do that) for The Boy to be supported overnight at first. We had talked lots about whether this was necessary and everyone who loves The Boy agreed that we had no idea what life in his own place would look like. We know that he isn’t able to imagine - ‘What would you do if?’ – so we had no way of knowing what his new rhythms would look like. On reflection, my friend Sharon’s daughter has just moved into her own place with her partner and I’m pretty certain they didn’t know in advance what life would be like, either.

James listened and agreed that support should initially include someone sleeping over every night, but that we would review this after 3 months. As it happened, after 2 months, The Boy decided he had had enough of someone sharing his flat at night and made it very clear that he wanted to be on his own. The only concern I still had was how he would respond if someone rang his video doorbell late at night – he lives in the centre of town and is right by pubs and clubs. We agreed to get a friend of one of his personal assistants (who The Boy doesn’t know) to pop around at midnight and ring the bell and… he didn’t answer it! I asked him the next day if he’d heard the doorbell ring and he said, ‘Oh dear. Too late. Not answer’. Perfect.

So, two and a half months after moving into his own place, The Boy has 42.5 hours support a week and is flying. James has moved on to a new job in a different part of the country and we agreed that this was the right time for The Boy not to have an allocated social worker, but for us to be able to get in touch with the team if necessary. All of the work I have described was done in 4 face-to-face visits and a few Teams calls over about 8 months.

The other week, I shared a different but equally human experience for my Mum. My argument is that both these experiences demonstrated a process that worked for the social worker, worked for us AND… yes, I’m going to say it, ended up being really cost-effective both in terms of social worker time and use of public money. That’s got to be worth celebrating.

PS. Did you see? The Gloriously Ordinary Sundays Podcast episode 7 is here. I chat with ⁠Gary Bourlet⁠, founder of the People First Movement in England and co-founder of ⁠Learning Disability England⁠. Gary tells us all about the ⁠Good Lives⁠ framework and we discuss the links between Good Lives and ⁠Gloriously Ordinary Lives⁠.