Delivery of Service
Referrals to Village Farm are normally made via the local Social Services or Health Department accountable for the young person's welfare. Referrals are accepted from educational establishments when a pupil is ready to move on to residential care or requires respite care during the holidays. Village Farm will also accept referrals from service users and their carer’s if they receive direct payments.
The principal criteria before Village Farm can consider a referral are that the person who requires care has been statemented as having a learning disability and also has some form of challenging behaviour. A Care Needs Assessment will then take place to ensure that Village Farm is the most suitable placement to meet the individual’s needs. On acceptance a contract will be drawn up between the placement authority or service user and Village Farm.
Village Farm does not provide nursing care facilities and is not intended to provide facilities for sensory impairment or profound physical disabilities such as paraplegia. Staff undertake training in Makaton sign language, the PECS communication system and these two systems can be offered to service users with limited or no vocal communication skills. Normally, those service users would be pre-schooled in some form of signing skills. However, if necessary specialised therapy can be provided and this would be agreed at pre-contract stage.
Village Farm will accept an emergency care placement provided that we have a vacant bedroom available at the time of referral.
Individual Day Activity Plans
Village Farm is not a large unit and is not designed to be one. The principal advantage behind living in a home in the community has to be the normality of the situation.Our service users participate as fully as possible in the day to day running of the home. With the help of support workers they are expected to adhere to a budget, shop, cook and do their share of the housework.
The service users together with the support workers are responsible for utilising their leisure time in the best way possible, for example short and long walks combined with a picnic in some of the local parks and stately homes and estates, full days exploring cities and towns with particular attractions, visits to the cinema and the local pub and the bowling alley. Village Farm has it’s own vehicle which is used to enable service users to access services and facilities within the local and wider community. To enable us to run and maintain the vehicle, service users are required to contribute 50% of their mobility allowance. This is in line with local authority recommendations. Village Farm has strict rules that any service users under the age of 18 do not have access to, or watch videos or films which have been certified as suitable for over 18’s. Systems and procedures are in place to safeguard service users when computer networking or on the internet. Independence skills are an important part of everyday life for our service users and the ambition of all involved is to enable our service users to maintain, develop and extend skills already acquired within their school or home setting.
