About Shared Lives
Shared Lives helps to find a new home or a place to stay for people of 18 years of age or over who have a learning difficulty. Shared Lives Carers will encourage and support service users to express their views, and make choices and decisions to develop meaningful daytime activities. They will encourage service users’ personal, social and emotional development; to fulfil cultural and faith needs; to develop and maintain personal and family relationships; and to be part of the local community.
Shared Lives gives a choice for those people who want to live or stay in a homely environment and need support.
Shared Lives can be:
• Somewhere to live. A permanent home
• Somewhere to stay for a short break/ or an overnight stay or anywhere up to 28 days
• A base to go to for day time support.
• Somewhere to live in the short term in order to learn independent living skills
There are lots of different kinds of Shared Lives carers. Some are couples, some live alone, some have children and some have pets. All the Shared Lives carers have been trained and have had Criminal Record Bureau (police) checks. We will tell you about carers who you could have support from.
How it works
When we have found a Shared Lives service that might be right for you, we can show you a photograph of the carers and their home. You will be able to meet the carers and visit them a few times so that you can get to know each other.
We will ask you to help us write a Person Centred Care plan which will tell your carers about you and the services that you need. It will say what you enjoy doing during the day and what you enjoy doing in the evening and at weekends. It will also say what new things you would like to do and learn and also what support you need.
The Shared Lives scheme will have regular meetings which will involve talking about whether you, the service user, and the Shared Lives carers are both happy and look to see if there is anything we need to change to improve the service.
In Shared Lives you will be treated with respect and as a member of the household. You must also treat the people who live there with respect.
How shared lives can support you
• you will have chosen your own carers
• you will share a home, which will be clean and well looked after
• if you are staying overnight you will have your own room and you can bring your own things to put in it
• you will be encouraged to make your own decisions with the support of SL carers
• you will be part of your local community
• you will have the company of other people but also have your own independence
• you will be able to meet new people and make new friends
• you can get the support you need to do things you chose to do
• you can learn new skills
• you can keep up with your regular activities such as college/work/day time activities
Your Shared Lives carers can support you with things like:
• making your own decisions
• Developing your independent living skills like making a cup of tea, managing your money or doing laundry
• developing new friendships and being involved in community life
• encouraging you to feel good and keep well
• they may help you with personal care like taking a bath, getting dressed
Any information your carers have about you is private. They will only share things with other people if they need to, in order to keep you safe or to get help that you need.
If there is anything about your Shared Lives scheme that you are not happy with, we hope you can talk to your carers. You can also talk to your Care Manager or the Shared Lives workers. You have the right to make a complaint if you feel there is a problem with the Shared Lives Scheme.