Whitwood Care - Specialist residential and supported living services for people with learning disabilities and significant challenging behaviours
At Whitwood Care we have a wealth of experience and expertise in providing for individuals who exhibit signs of challenging behaviour, including those with autistic spectrum disorders and Asperger’s syndrome.
We have a progressive approach to providing services: when an authority chooses to place a person in our residential services, we endeavour to deliver a pathway plan for each person that enables them to develop the necessary skills and self belief to move on to personalised, settled services within their local community.
We believe this powerful philosophy is a strong commitment to the person using our services to deliver the improvements promised and achieve positive outcomes in their lives.
Likewise, it is a strong commitment to the placing authority to deliver a quality service, leading to a step-down in services and fees.
This is especially important for authorities who are looking to repatriate individuals currently placed in secure settings outside of their local area which are high dependency and high cost.
Our resources, including currently in excess of 140 full time staff, are comprehensive and extensive to ensure an appropriate and flexible care package for all service users. We operate a well developed keyworker system whereby each service user is assigned a keyworker on admission. This approach can help those whose previous behaviour has precluded social inclusion to become more integrated and involved with the local community.
The essence of our service is the flexibility to develop care and behaviour support plans that are ‘made to measure’ for each individual and, because there are few specialist organisations able to offer such a flexible service, service users are placed with us from all over the country.
Admissions are welcome on either a short or long term basis; we provide a 12 week assessment period during which time we can get to know the service user and the service user can get to know us. Our 24-hour staffing and support network ensures that we can provide a high standard of service around the clock.
Whitwood Care is able to work with authorities to provide:
- Clinical needs assessments – provided by our in-house team of professional staff including clinical psychology, nursing and S.A.L.T.
- Successful transition planning
- Specialist step down residential services from hospital and secure setting including those subject to detention under the Mental Health Act
- Local community based community settled services
Skilled and caring staff are our greatest asset at Whitwood Care and are vital in providing and maintaining our excellent quality of service. We invest a great deal of time and resources in training our staff, enabling them to provide the highest standard of care in this specialist setting.
De-escalation techniques help in the management of violence and aggression that can manifest itself within the service. Using this approach enables us to concentrate on personal skills development which effectively improves the quality of life for our service users. Due to the difficulties that some of our service users’ experience, there may be occasions when we need to employ physical interventions.
All our staff are trained in these specialist techniques and regularly attend training updates to ensure any interventions always follow least restrictive principles.
The service is further enhanced by a our multidisciplinary approach and we work with local professional services e.g. psychologists, psychiatrists, dentists, local GPs, podiatrists and physiotherapists etc.
This includes valuable input from community learning disability teams, occupational therapists and continence services.
Our clinical team includes a specialist consultant clinical psychologist, Dr Jayne Moran. Jayne has over ten years experience in the field of learning disability. She has worked in the NHS, in the private sector, in secure settings and in the community and currently manages a successful Psychology Service for adults with a learning disability and mental health problems plus a specialist community-based Intensive Support Team for adults with complex needs and behaviours that challenge the NHS service provision.
Dr Moran works closely with Whitwood Care providing specialist consultation to help us improve our understanding of the complex needs of our service users, improve the skills of our staff, implement behaviour management techniques and thus improve the quality of the services we provide in order that we can continue to improve the quality of life for all service users.