As we celebrate Starts at Home Day, a campaign which highlights the importance of offering supported housing to those who need the extra assistance, LiveWest shares the help it gave to a customer.
The Starts at Home Day campaign takes place to recognise how important supported housing can be to help those who are going through a difficult time and improve their lives so they can get the support they may need.
We are sharing the experience of a customer who was supported by our New Horizons team. New Horizons provide emergency supported accommodation for people and families at risk, often with complex support needs.
The team supports people needing to flee domestic abuse but who wouldn’t be able to access communal living refuge accommodation.
H had experienced a lifetime of abusive behaviours from a range of people since her childhood. She had been married to her husband for over 50 years, but she had experienced a high level of domestic abuse from her husband for the entire marriage.
Her husband had been extremely controlling, showing coercive behaviours, emotionally abusive behaviours, financially abusive behaviours, and physical aggression towards her. The emotional abuse had left her feeling as though she had no control over her own life, the physical abuse had been so severe that it had left her with a disability and mobility issues.
Our New Horizons team received a referral for H through an IDVA (independent domestic violence adviser) based in the GP surgery. They were only able to have a very brief conversation directly with H whilst she was in an appointment with her GP with her husband in the waiting room. The team were able to quickly explain how we would be able to support her and ask what she would like.
Our Referrals Coordinator worked closely with the Police, the IDVA and the health care professionals to arrange a safe move into our supported accommodation with her dog, who was extremely important to her.
When H first arrived in the accommodation, she could barely make eye contact with anyone, she hadn’t been able to have a haircut for several years and her glasses were glued together. Her low-level confidence was apparent through her covering her face with her hair and finding everyday activities very overwhelming.
H had never been food shopping for herself before, she had never had the chance to choose what she wanted to have or do for herself at all. Our Support Worker had supported her to start doing her own food shopping and initially couldn’t leave her side, as this would cause panic but over several months the Support Worker would move away.
She would say she had forgotten something from the previous isle and then even needing to get her phone from the car. This gave H the confidence and supported her to be able to start making her own choices and decisions around her own life, ranging from what food she would like to buy from the supermarket, to what’s important to her with her own appearance.
H soon had her hair cut short and dyed it bright orange for herself and she got new glasses. By having the space and support to find out who she could be and how she would like to live her own life, H really thrived, and her confidence grew hugely, very quickly. They supported H to access counselling services, legal advice, the GP surgery, opticians, and further benefits that she was entitled to, therefore maximising her income.
Our Support Worker was able to work in a way that really understood H’s previous trauma to support H to have the life that she wants to live, an important part of that life being her ability and confidence in managing positive relationships with other people.
She was able to put in really healthy boundaries with new friendships in her new area and would regularly check in with the support worker to talk around what more she could do to ensure that she felt in control of what choices she was able to make.
H has since moved into her own home. Although the Support Worker was able to offer some low-level support through the move and for a short time afterwards, it was very clear that H was keen and able to take the lead with her move and has even researched and applied for grants to make her home more affordable for her to live in permanently.
H has had her dog with her every day since leaving her abusive marriage. This was really important for her to be able to move on successfully.
She really is thriving in her own space and her own home, she is physically more confident, chatting to people in supermarkets and going into town by herself with no need to comply to anyone else’s rules or requirements but her own.
She feels empowered to lead the life that she wants to live and has recently enquired about adult swimming lessons because she would like to learn how to swim. H is thankful for every day she lives in freedom.