"Social Care Solutions have developed a service that is designed to be responsive to clients needs, flexible and competitive."
Autism
Sarah Calvert is the lead Practitioner for Autism across the Care Solutions Group and is responsible for developing services for people with Autism Spectrum Conditions (ASC)
Sarah has extensive experience and knowledge in the area of specialist service provision for individuals with Autism. Her experience in developing and managing services for people with autism spans the National Health Service and Social Care sectors. Sarah qualified as a Registered Nurse, Learning Disabilities early on in her career. She then went on to become a community nurse, largely working with people with autism and their families. Sarah was then appointed to a Clinical Nurse Manager post, managing specialist residential NHS services for people with autism, together with forensic assessment and treatment services and community nursing teams. During this time, Sarah was formally recognised within the NHS for her pioneering work in service modernisation.
In 2000 Sarah left the NHS and joined the National Autistic Society where she worked until 2007, as the Area Manager for East Anglia. She was able to develop her knowledge and skills further here, and gain a real insight into the issues that people with autistic spectrum conditions and their supporters face in every day life. She also led a major person centred leadership initiative, ensuring excellent outcomes for people the autistic spectrum conditions and their families.
Sarah is a skilled and knowledgeable practitioner. She has experience and knowledge of the clinical aspects of autistic spectrum conditions and how to support these, and understands the life long implications this can have for people and their families and friends. She has a person centred approach coupled with proven theoretical knowledge.
In addition to gaining qualifications in Person Centered Leadership, Approaches and Planning, Sarah is a qualified counsellor and has achieved her NVQ 5 Management Award.
Our Philosophy
At the Care Solutions Group, we recognise that everyone is different and a one size fits all approach does not actually fit anyone. Our goal is to make a positive difference in the lives of those individuals that we support. We understand that people with autistic spectrum conditions can behave in ways which challenge traditional and inflexible service provision. Our approach to specialist support, centres around tailoring a programme of support for each individual and recognising that autism effects each person differently. We place the individual at the centre of our organisation and working with other professionals, the individuals family and the individual themselves, we develop creative ways to work with each person in their terms. We believe that the way to deliver the highest quality service and most positive individual outcomes, is to work very closely with the individual we support and their families, To listen to their views and how they want to live their lives, what is important to them and enable their choices. Working together we can make a real positive difference. Training, staff support and resource allocation are also key to delivering and developing ever improving specialist services, and we are committed to ensuring all staff receive specific training in ASC at inductions. We recruiting specialists into our team to help build and develop our skills and knowledge, and to work with families, local and national groups and bring new ideas, and approaches into our service provision.
Our Approach
Our approach is one of individualised positive support. We adopt nationally recognised models of good practice, for example the Spell approach, and we believe in keeping things simple, effective and person centered.
S tructure — Ensuring we uphold and respect the individuals structure. NOT impose our own.
P ositive Approaches — Avoiding negative reactions and terminologies.
E mpathy — Putting ourselves in our service users shoes, and understanding how they see the world and working with them from their perspective.
L ow arousal — Providing enough information but not too much, or too many instructions, low arousal environment and sound.
L inks — Supporting links with family and community.
Our Support
Our support includes:
- The right environment — ensuring the environment is developed to meet the needs of the individual and their choices, including areas such as colour, furnishings, bath / shower facilities. If the world around us meets our expectations and we are safe and comfortable, we can then start to work on development and improvement. This may be Residential or Supported living.
- Communication Strategies—we provide a wide range of communication mediums and strategies, one size does not fit all and across the organisation we have communication officers, who have been trained by specialist speech and language therapy departments , to support each individuals communication needs, and develop the relevant and necessary communication tools, or skills within each local staff team. These strategies include visual communications, sign, PECS, Teacch, Makaton and everything in-between, as chosen by the individual.
- Social Skills Support — enabling and building confidence through small steps and community involvement, with house mates or co-tenants, and within the wider environment, slowly and supportively pushing boundaries to enable community presence, in a supportive manner.
- Behaviour Support — All behaviours are communication and we work with each individual, their key worker or Personal Assistant and their families to identify the communication and develop strategies for the individual to communicate in ways which provide results and clarity. All our behaviour support processes are approved by BILD.
- Sensory processing - As with behavioural support, communication and coping strategies play a large part in sensory processing, and programmes are developed alongside our sensory support & snoezelen environments, not only to just enable relaxation but also managing sensory inputs.
