The Difference Between Care and Support
Care
Care far more involved than support is and is often treated very differently. Often in care you are working with an individual who for any number of reasons is unable to complete some or all daily tasks themselves or function freely and effectively without the aid of someone else helping them. This could be due to having a disability, Being elderly or quite young, having an illness or suffering from mental health disorders.
This is generally not the type of service we offer.
Support
Support is when an individual is able to function independently without other people as they are physically and mentally able and cognitive enough. However, due to perhaps a lack of knowledge or skill or adequate socialisation they need some assistance to do it correctly. The goal is to teach or advise an individual how to do something or pass a skill you may have acquired. This could be things we ourselves don't even realise we have such as, basic organisational skills, timekeeping, making appointments, cooking, cleaning, personal hygiene, relationship building, basic socialisation, cultural awareness and adaptation among other things.
Things We Do with Young People:
The types of activities we often do with young people are things such as going to the gym (expenses covered), cooking, cleaning, talking, listening, checking on their health and wellbeing, booking appointments, checking that they are in some form of Education, Employment, or Training, going out for meals (Expenses covered), communicating with their social workers, Advocating for that young person, Doing social activities such as going to the cinemas (expenses covered) amongst other things.
Who We Work With
We typically do not work with young people suffering from extreme mental health, or severe disability due to the skills and training required for our staff, the regulations that need to be followed and the overall type of support our service chooses to specialise in. However, we do not shy away from a young person who is a challenge as we train our staff to extreme lengths to deal with that young person understand them and help them change for the better making smarter and wiser decisions as they acquire new knowledge and skills.
Who We Work With
We typically work with young people aged 16 to 19, in certain rare circumstances we may extend to 25. But every young person and mentor is risk assessed and matched based on their interests, personality type, cultural background, needs, and other factors before pairing them up so that each mentor and young person will get along and help each other achieve the best result possible. This also ensures that you both have a good foundation and common ground to begin a working relationship.
Who We Work With
We work with a range of young people. Two of the most popular types are young people who have been taken into care, and young people who are refugees or unaccompanied Asylum Seekers. Young people who are taken into care are not in any way shape or form “bad” kids at all, they are simply young people who have had to be assisted by the government due to the fact for some reason or another their parents were unable to support them and their development well enough. Reasons for this could be because their parent(s) have died and they could not live with a relative, or that parent may be physically sick, or may not have the resources to support them e.g., overcrowding in the home, or yes, they may be at risk at home or have experienced abuse.
Young migrants are often people who have been through trauma or are at grave risk in their home country, they have ended up in the U.K because of the danger they have faced or are facing in their original country. Some of these young people have seen their parents and relative murdered in front of their faces and barely escaped being murdered themselves, migrants from areas such as Iraq, Sudan, Bulgaria amongst other places and races. Other young people have been victims of kidnapping and child sex trafficking and has overcome unimaginable things and are trying to recover and become adjusted functional members of society, but needs a little support from a trustworthy, caring, kind individual to access the best they can be and contribute to the society they are a part of and the world at large.
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This service runs residential work, which means these young people you will be working with the young people within their placements,
These young people DO NOT LIVE WITH YOU. The young people our organisation works with typically have three general types of housing which are usually houses our service has acquired. Outreach is where a young person typically lives in either a house/flat alone or a house/flat with one other young person and a worker goes in for mentoring and key working visits, in that visit a mentor may check how the young person/people is doing, is the property tidy and being maintained, has the young people been shopping among other things. Key workers have varying caseloads of young people based on how much they wish to work in a month. They often decide with the young person what days, times, locations to meet, and for how many hours so therefore a staff member has ultimate flexibility and work around childcare and other commitments.
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The second is where a young person lives in one of our provided shared accommodation with other young people usually up to 5. That accommodation may have floating support staff that comes in for some hours during the day and a night staff that stays overnight. Alternatively, we may have a full 24hour support staff in some units. This is based on shift work but is very fun as a staff is usually facilitating games nights, chef nights, work out nights etc.
The other form is young people who live with parents or carers who need some support. Whether recommended by state or by the court or by the parent themselves. And so, we do a variation of outreach where we go and do visits with that young person and do activities however, they do not live in a flat or accommodation provided by us.
What a mentor is required to deliver is what is known as mentoring and key working,
Both of these are carried out in visits and sessions that vary with each client.
So, if you're passionate, organised, reliable, independent, and motivated this is a great job for you. It is fun, flexible, varied, rewarding and well paid.
OUR SUPPORT SERVICES
Key Working
Key working at Infinity is classed as the formal and legal things that we do with or for young people. Doing key working is very important and each instance must be evidenced. This includes activities such as registering and booking Doctor's, Dentist & Opticians, creating/following support plans And more. Here we break this down into passive and active key working. Active is something you do directly with the young person such as going to the doctors physically. Passive is something you do for them even if they are not there; such as writing and logging information and reports. This is heavily supported and influenced by the key working codex and independent skills.
Outreach
Outreach is a type of support service that we offer to young people who do not live within our group supported accommodation. Young people who live in standalone flats are a good example of outreach support. It’s involves doing the same mentoring and keyworking as you would in the group homes but instead just traveling around to different homes to meet different young people. You as a keyworker can book and schedule these times with the young people. And each young person will have different hours of support. Parents can privately access this type of support for their children too. We typically deliver this service by meeting young people in their home or in their community. Some of the young people who used to live in supported accommodation and now live on their own will still have outreach sessions with a keyworker/ mentor in the 18 plus flats.
Care
Care is working with an individual who for some reason or another is unable to complete daily tasks themselves or function freely and effectively without the aid of someone else helping them. This could be due to having a disability, being elderly or quite young, having an illness or suffering from mental health disorders. This is not the type of service we offer. This is tasks such as cooking for them, clean for them, shopping for them and sometimes cleaning them and bathing them. The key word for them that differentiates it from support is FOR.
In-House Activities
A wide range of facilities that we have in each of our homes that young people can engage in. these range from gym and sporting equipment to studio equipment, games systems and more
Alliance Portal App
A multi- purpose platform which allows young people, key workers and social workers to seamlessly connect and keep upto date on all the happenings of the home, lives of young people and so much more.
Mentoring
Mentoring is anything that is designed to build relationships and develop the young person interpersonal, relationship, social, or emotional well-being. This could be watching films, talking, going out for meals, playing games among other things amongst other things. This is heavily supported and influenced by the key working codex and independent skills. As well as the activities list.
Bespoke Education
Bespoke education is looking at courses and training programmes that are tailored to a person, these could be in the way they are delivered or the flexibility in their hours which help them be more accessible to young people. We offer this through our sister organisation Vast education which is an organisation government funded to provide education to some young people. This could be things ranging from music qualifications to business development and management to coaching or personal training and a plethora of other trainings. It does require a person going out and actively working in these environments such as a music studio. which Vast educations usually organises.
Youth Centres
Community Places offering a wide range of facilities and activities for others to engage in. these are good places to allow young people to build relationships and social skills and interactions as well as giving them positive activities to engage in to direct their energies in positive ways. Such as kickboxing, football, basketball. Dance, photography, studio recording amongst many others.
Complex Needs
A person with 'complex needs' is. someone with two or more needs affecting their physical, mental, social or financial wellbeing. Such needs typically interact with, and exacerbate one another leading to individuals experiencing several problems simultaneously.
Someone can have complex needs because of learning or physical disabilities, autism, mental health, acquired brain injury or dementia, often combined with physical health needs that might include epilepsy or sensory issues.
People use behaviour that challenges as a way of getting their needs met. It is a way of communicating your feelings and emotions when you don’t have the skills to do it in other ways. Types of behaviour include self-injury, hurting others, ingesting inedible items, being destructive, or other behaviours like persistently running away, spitting or removing clothes.
Passive and Active Keyworking
As an organisation not all sessions that we have with young people will be considered active.
An “active” session, is a mentoring or key working session that is carried out with the young person present, where we support them directly or have active conversation and interaction with them.
“Passive” key working and mentoring is activities done on behalf of the young person or not formally structured.
Examples of Active Key working would be Discussing Job Prospects with the Young Person and supporting them to amend their CV and apply for Jobs. Active mentoring would be activities such as Taking the young person to the gym.
Passive Key working may include things done like signing the young person up to doctors or calling dentists to find available ones in the area. Researching things on behalf of the young person e.g. properties for them when they turn 18.
Forms for Passive sessions must be filled the same as you would for active sessions and the young person must also sign for these.
Key- working and how to ascertain information example
Lets say you are having a key working session with a young person and you are communicating with them and during the session they say to you that they are going to visit there father on the weekend, this can be seen as an opportunity to build a relationship with them alongside gaining key information that may help you in the long run with any potential issues and understanding the young person’s feelings and motives.
For example, the young person has said the above, from this point you can ask questions such as “are you looking forwards to seeing your dad this weekend” then invoking a conversation about their relationship with family and how they view them. From here you can lead the conversation on to a place where you are able to ask more questions such as “what activities do you looks forwards to the most with your dad” or “have you and your dad always been close and done things together”. From this level of conversation, you can ascertain key information that you can relay to management and social workers in an email later that day showing that you are capable of building a relationship with the young person and adequately do what’s required of you.
How to handle illegal substances
If a young person is found to have illegal substances in the house then please do not try to forcibly take it from them, firstly remind them of the house rules that were agreed and signed upon in the pre placement meeting and that they still stand and moving forwards if they are found during the weekly room checks then they will have to be removed and dispatched appropriately in accordance with the house rules.
Please make sure to note this and to update management and the social worker with the relative information in an email at the end of the day.
What to do if a young person is not engaging
Firstly, to make this easier it is important to establish boundaries and a relationship with the young person from the first day. This can be done simply by talking with them, getting to know them, and helping them feel heard and understood.
If a young person is not engaging in a key working session or general activities, firstly you can remind them of the key working schedule that was agreed upon with them and the social worker in order to help them gain skills and support their development as a person and that they are actually for the young person’s benefit, alongside this you can attempt to make them feel more comfortable with the setting of the session as it does not have to be just you and them sat in a room talking. For example, you can suggest going for a walk and just talking or even going for an activity of their choosing to achieve the desired effect and allow them to open up to you.
Key Working Sessions
Key working sessions are typically about helping a young person to develop key life skills and encourage self-improvement to be able to navigate adult life.
Key working sessions do not need to be “formal” sit downs, a session can be something as simple as having a conversation with the young person when they return home about their day and how they are. As long as you are able to ascertain key information from this conversation and are able to put this information down in writing and evidence in the form of a key working session form.
Key working sessions are to be done with every young person every single day (according to their key working schedule) and if they are shorter than one hour then you round the session up to one hour. If they last over an hour but not quite 2 hours then you round it up again to the next hour mark this is the point to follow.
