Learning Disabilities / Autism & Self Neglect
Learning Disability
A learning disability is when an individual has a reduced ability to understand/process information. Individuals with a learning disability can also find it difficult to communicate and can affect their independence.
People with learning disabilities can have difficulty with everyday tasks such as household chores, managing budget and even socialising. At Promoting Independence South West, we can support you to achieve these tasks and more. Whatever you're doing, whether at home, going out, finding education or employment, we're committed to providing mentoring and support; to enable you to achieve your goals towards independence.
We'll work with you and your support network to create your support plan and involve you in choosing your support workers, providing you with staff who understand you. We provide specific learning disability training for our staff to ensure our care and support meets your needs.
Learning Difficulty
A learning difficulty is often hard to diagnose from health care professionals, and are rarely entitled to social care support and intervention; due to not being deemed to have a significant reduced ability to understand/process some information.
As with those with learning disabilities, learning difficulties can create barriers to undertaking everyday tasks, whether this is at home, socialising and accessing activities/transport, education and/or employment. Our service offers support and mentoring with identified areas that you wish require to increase your independence. No goal is too small for us support you with.
Autism
Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects a person's ability to communicate and build social relationships. It also leads to unusually narrow interests, a strong preference for repetition, sensory hyper-sensitivity, and challenges in adjusting to unexpected change.
Promoting Independence South West is aware that Autism also leads to excellent attention to detail, memory for detail, and excellent pattern recognition. Some people with autism also have learning difficulties and/or language delay. Autism is a spectrum; while all people with autism share common traits, their condition will affect them in very different ways. Some individuals are able to live relatively independent lives; others will require a lifetime of specialist support.
People with Asperger Syndrome have average or above average intelligence and good language skills. Some may be able to function well in school or in the work place but still have a hard time socialising. Others may find even daily tasks related to independence challenging, often because they feel overwhelmed by too much information. (www.autismresearchtrust.org.uk).
Our Service has a wealth of experience and skills when working with Autism, and therefore are able to offer a bespoke care package that is tailored to the person's needs.
Promoting Independence will be seeking membership with National Autism Society.
Self Neglect
We recognise Self-neglect as an extreme lack of self-care, it is sometimes associated with hoarding and may be a result of other issues such as addictions. Our specialist team ensure that the most the important thing is to try to engage with people, to offer all the support we are able to without causing distress, and to understand the limitations to our interventions if the person does not wish to engage.
We work tirelessly to ensure that the person's views are considered and are paramount to our way of working. Mentoring in unison with individuals in a task centred manner is pivotal to our practice and strive to make small steps with our clients to move toward greater independence and reduce the risk of potential risk to them.
Working in partnership with our clients is key to ensuring that the identified risks are reduced, whilst adhering to their rights, autonomy and control in their lives.