From Mike Bomford, Exeter 382173, October 1, 2008

On behalf of Devon County Council, Devon Primary Care Trust and Guinness Care and Support

People with learning disabilities who are eligible for social care are to have more choice and control over where and how they receive the support they need.

Devon County Council and Devon Primary Care Trust are getting together with Guinness Care and Support (GCS), one of the county's largest providers of residential care for people with learning disabilities, to see how support for GCS's residents could be made even better.

Nationally, the Government is asking local authorities to deliver services that encourage and develop people's independence as much as possible, and give people much more control and choice over their own care.

So Devon County Council and Devon Primary Care Trust, beginning with Guinness Care and Support (GCS), want to reassess to see how they could be giving people more choice and control over their services.

GCS provide care services to people with learning disabilities across Exeter, East and Mid Devon, with 23 residential homes. 

Over the next two years each of the 175 residents will, with the help of people close to them including parents and carers, individually decide how they might like to be supported including where they would most like to live in future; and identifying what they like doing now and what they would like to do more of in future. 

It is an opportunity for residents to review the ways that they are being currently supported and decide whether that support is the best it can be to help them achieve what they want to do in life.

With the right support, residents might choose to live more independently in their own flats, or share houses with other people.  Or people might choose to continue living in residential care.

Once a person has developed their own plan, an individual budget is calculated to meet their needs.  People can then choose how their budget is used to buy the support they need, taking into account the choices and preferences in their plan.

What ever type of accommodation a person chooses, it has to meet their personal needs.

At the moment Devon still has more people with learning disabilities living in residential homes than in any other type of accommodation, but the County Council expects that number to decline over time as more choice and more support becomes available.

Where the authorities have already piloted individual budgets, and people have more choice about where they live, residential care options have been rarely chosen.

Guinness Care and Support are welcoming the review and are working alongside health and social care authorities to see how they can provide more flexible types of accommodation and opportunities for independence.

Guinness Care and Support's Director of Strategic Projects, Marina Caston said :

"We are a forward looking provider and welcome this considered approach as it gives us the opportunity to respond to what people will want in the future."

Devon County Council's Executive Member for Adult and Community Services, Cllr Hugo Barton said:

"We know, because people with learning disabilities have told us, that given more choice and support, many would choose to live in different circumstances than traditional residential care.

"We are beginning to work with Guinness Care and Support's residential homes as part of this programme, and we will be making sure that residents, their families and carers, are fully involved in the whole process."