The official version of this document can be found via the PDF button.
The below content has been automatically generated from the original PDF and some formatting may have been lost, therefore it should not be relied upon to extract citations or propose amendments.
New Horizons Support Services is a local independent Social Enterprise that is dedicated to offering a Person Centred approach to Home, Social Care and Supported Holidays, providing solutions to each individual's needs.
New Horizons has been established to support the development and delivery of sustainable local social care services, promoting equality in our community.
For many, the challenges of caring for a chronically ill or disabled family member are simply a part of daily life. Caregiving though, is a demanding job and no one is equipped to do it alone. Our services provide short-term breaks that can relieve stress, restore energy, and promote a more balanced life.
New Horizons are Approved Providers of Short Breaks Respite Services for Children, Outreach Short Breaks Respite Services for Adults and Home Care Services with The States of Jersey.
Our services are accessible to individuals with mild/moderate needs to those who require specialist support and can be funded privately, or if arrangements are in place through States of Jersey funding. Our services include a Sitting Service, Outreach Respite Services, Life Skills Training and activity sessions or weeks.
I founded New Horizons Support Services in 2013 after many discussions with individuals and their carers, reading reports by the States of Jersey and observing the changing needs of our local community, showed the need for a Service Provider who could provide a Person Centred Approach to Social Care in Jersey.
I have worked for 9 years in the Health and Social Care sector in a variety of settings, including Residential Care, Day Services and the Voluntary Third Sector. This has provided me with first-hand experience of the issues service users and their parents/carers face.
My own experience since being approved to provide Respite services is that the allocation process is very slow and does not run efficiently. We are currently only delivering two packages of support under the adult respite umbrella but know that there are people out there that would like to access our services. On occasion, I have been approached by a Social worker in relation to providing a package of support, to then be told that neither funding nor a start date has actually been agreed and they will have to still take it to panel for agreement. This this makes it very difficult to ensure you have the correct levels of staffing in place and means that vast majority of staff are currently on zero hour contracts as we are unable to guarantee them work.
As a small provider cash flow is of vital importance. Staffing costs are our biggest cost and so it is not possible to have staffing levels above and beyond that which is actually required to deliver the services we are providing. Had it not been for areas of growth in other areas of the business it would have been very difficult to make the contract to deliver Adults Short Breaks viable for the business.
As an organisation we have also looked at ways of providing Residential Respite solutions. The cost of acquiring such a suitable property and the necessary equipment means this is something that is not currently within our reach as a new company, even if private investment was possible. We met with a number of exiting Residential Care homes but were unable to find accommodation that had the necessary equipment to deliver the specialist support required, that was also a suitable
Page 1 of 2
environment to deliver support for young adults who wanted to experience opportunities to socialise in their community. Another stumbling block was the costs involved in providing a residential respite package that provides individuals the opportunity to develop life skills and have meaningful opportunities to be a part of their community, as this requires staff that are highly skilled and trained. In order to attract staff with the right skills and training or offer the correct training requires us to offer rates of pay that are comparable with what the States of Jersey pays its Health Care Assistants/Support Workers, but the budgets we were asked to try and work with meant compromises would have to have been made and thus we would be unable to provide a service to a level that we would have deemed satisfactory.
Due to the varied complex needs of the individuals we support, the staff are required to have experience in a wide range of specialties, such as communication disorders, behavioural issues, administration of medication, PEGG feeding systems and stoma care. Due to the fact we are primarily about providing a Social Care model of support, it means that it can be difficult to find staff with this broad range of knowledge and skills. To provide staff with training in some of these areas, especially in areas such as the Stoma care, PEGG feeding and administration of medication can be difficult, because individuals with those needs are few and far between on an island of this size and so the staff have very few chances to gain the necessary experience in order to complete the training standards. This leads to us having to recruit staff with the necessary experience, often being HSSD staff and so leads to cost implications.
I can say that the commissioners and Social workers I have dealt with over the past 2 years have been helpful whenever they can be and that everyone tries to do the best that they can, but that they are restricted by a process that does not work effectively. I and all the staff at New Horizons, along with the other providers of Adult Respite Services, try to deliver services that meet the needs of all individuals, but are restricted by a system that does not take into account the needs of the individual. This makes delivering a person centred service a very difficult task to achieve. Budgets are restricted, as are the opportunities to access suitable environments even when in the community, but we all continue to strive to provide a better life for the individuals and families we support.
Page 2 of 2