Supported living is a service designed to help people with a wide range of support needs retain their independence by being supported in their own home. People in supported living have their own tenancy and are responsible for their own bills and cost of living. This may include full or part furnishing and repairing any damage – exact details will vary locally. To afford these, the person may be entitled to a wide range of benefits and grants. In single person supported living, they will also have their own front door.

In Supported Living, support provision is not dependent on provision of housing (and vice versa.) So if the support provider changes, this doesn’t affect the tenancy. The person has security of tenure in line with their tenancy agreement – they can only be made to leave under certain circumstances, usually by order of a court.

In registered care (also known as residential care, or a care home) the person has a license to occupy a room – or occasionally a flat in a larger complex – and bills are covered by the care provider. The person can be made to leave relatively easily. The landlord is usually the same person or organisation who does the care and support. Few benefits remain available (see below for detail.) In both formats, the quality of the care and support and the pleasantness of the environment should be comparable. Also the care and support is commissioned by a Local Authority or health board and regulated by CQC (in England) or CIW (in Wales) in both formats – though in different ways, which we address further within the rest of this FAQ.

People in supported living are responsible for their own bills and cost of living. To afford this, the person may be entitled to a wide range of benefits such as Housing Benefit (HB) – if they don’t work, Personal Independence Payments (PIP,) Employment and Support Allowance (ESA,) Mobility Allowance and Attendance Allowance (AA.) Grants to adapt a property may also be available.

In residential care, few benefits remain available. These include the mobility part of PIP and some of the daily living component. There are more marked differences to be aware of. For example, in residential care holidays may be included – though in our recent experience this is becoming less common. In supported living people pay for their own holidays, including additional staff costs. Like anyone else, people in supported living pay their own domestic bills and shopping costs, together with costs incurred by staff in the course of the support they provide – such as bus fares and activities.

Supported living isn’t necessarily more expensive overall but because families are often involved in seeing and managing the money for the first time, it can look quite alarming to those who have been used to the ‘all inclusive’ deal in a care home.

You may not be immediately able to. In fact, it is an indicator of quality that someone’s home looks and feels like an ordinary home rather than a workplace, regardless of the technicalities of the living arrangement.

But some registered care homes stand out for the wrong reasons. If you’re considering something that looks roughly like a university campus, or which has many people with a learning disability living on the same site, our advice is to be very cautious. Surroundings like this can be photogenic but are they real life?

Ask yourself – and the management – some tough questions about how they support people to become independent, to make their own decisions and control their own lives. Lives – those that are really lived – are messy, in normal houses in normal streets. Ordinary lives don’t happen in segregated communities.

The benefits of supported living are the choice, control and enfranchisement that come from holding one’s own tenancy and – in a single person service – one’s own front door.

In particular, by separating a person’s support and housing provider, the housing will remain constant even if a person’s support provider changes. That is essential; no-one should be forced to endure low quality support in order to keep living in their home. This is the case even with providers (such as Dimensions,) that provide both support and housing.

The benefits of supported living are the choice, control and enfranchisement that come from holding one’s own tenancy. The resulting responsibilities include managing multiple costs, keeping to the tenancy agreement etc. For some people the benefits may not be meaningful or desirable and then the costs are an avoidable burden. So there are times when supported living may not be the right model of support.

That’s why all decisions about an individual’s support should always be made on person-centred grounds, not on any sort of ideology. For example, it may be that a registered care home is able to offer greater shared support. It may be that a tenancy becomes something of an anchor, if a person’s declining health requires considerable adaptation to be made to his or her living environment. It could be that a single person supported living arrangement leads to the person becoming more socially isolated (though note that in this case the issue is the ‘single person’ not the supported living per se.)

Supported living used to be thought of as primarily for more able people and those who wish to live alone. Whilst both those groups of people can certainly benefit from supported living, so can people with more complex needs, and those who prefer to live with housemates. Both supported living and registered care can provide support 24/7 support if required; we support many people with profound and multiple learning disabilities and complex needs in supported living environments.

We also support people in smaller care homes and larger supported living services as well as the opposite. The decision about whether someone lives alone or with housemates should be based on their assessed needs, personal wishes, compatibility and the opportunity to pool budgets to deliver shared support.

Individuals in receipt of residential care services are funded entirely by the commissioning bodies. The funding covered includes accommodation, care, food and utilities, with the people that we support receiving a weekly allowance for the purchase of personal sundry items.

Where individuals are in receipt of supported living services, the commissioning bodies are responsible for funding the care element of the service only. The person will assume responsibility for paying for the accommodation, including food and utilities. In addition, they will have a tenancy agreement with the housing provider, and be eligible to claim appropriate benefits to include housing benefit.

In supported living, tenants are in charge of how their home is used. This includes:

People in supported living are responsible for their own bills and cost of living. To afford this, the person may be entitled to a wide range of benefits such as Housing Benefit (HB) – if they don’t work, Personal Independence Payments (PIP,) Employment and Support Allowance (ESA,) Mobility Allowance and Attendance Allowance (AA.) Grants to adapt a property may also be available.

• An agreement needs to be made as to how sta­ff use people’s homes
• Agreement on where staff park their cars, hang up their coats, put their food away during the shift etc
• Office space/sleep-in available for staff to keep personal belongs
• Use of assistive technology to support people to live independently
• Staff will not hold keys and will ask to enter the property, where this is appropriate

Some of the key benefits for people include:

• More personal money for each individual through receipt of benefits
• More opportunities to do more things
• More choice and power about how they live their life
• Choice on how staff work in their home
• Have keys to their front door and not staff holding, unless agreed that is the best option

Priory Adult Care and the housing provider will support individuals to make appropriate claims, including housing benefit. Conversations with the district housing benefit departments are all very different and need to be started as soon as possible, in order to get an agreement on how best to apply this benefit.

Additionally, the individuals will also need to be supported in order to claim the welfare benefits they are entitled to with the support of their financial appointee, if they have one.

With clear separation between housing and support costs, it is no longer appropriate for any support costs to be reflected in the rent charged. Below is an illustration of how the finances responsibility may look before and after the change to supported living.

Please note: The funding streams above are indicative only and cannot be guaranteed. Local Authority funding also sometimes require a financial contribution towards care, but that is based on an individual’s financial assessment.

The supported living model requires a person-centred approach to how support is delivered to individuals (REACH Standards). Each person will have an assessment, which will identify the level of support that they require. Priory Adult Care will work with the person they will support to ensure that they have a structured day and support them to develop the skills to increase their independence, this may be very simple steps at first.