Your pathway plan
You should have a pathway plan. This is a document created with your social worker that shows how you will move to independent living. It should state:
- how social services will support you and what other support is available
- what will happen if things don’t go according to the plan.
It should include where you will live, what money you will live on and a plan for your education, training or employment. Social services must review your plan every six months and update it if your needs change.
Personal advisor
Your pathway plan should tell you who will help you after you leave care. This is your ‘personal adviser’. Social services should keep your plan up to date and give you a personal adviser until your 21st birthday, or until your 25th birthday if you ask for this, or until your education or training ends if that is later.
If you don’t know who your personal adviser is, contact the social services area who looked after you. Or, ring Coram Voice for advice, on freephone number 0808 800 5792.
Staying put
If your foster family agree, you could continue to live with them. Social services should provide advice, assistance, and support to make sure this arrangement works.
Thrive 16+ Service
The Thrive 16+ service offers housing related support and accommodation for children in care and care leavers. It also supports other young people who have no involvement with children’s social care but are homeless, eligible and reason to believe in priority need under homelessness legislation.
This service is for young people aged between 16 and 25. The service can help with:
- Emergency accommodation if you are in a housing crisis and need accommodation at very short notice.
- Mediation to help to rebuild connections with family where that is appropriate.
- A range of supported accommodation in Taunton, Minehead, Bridgwater, Frome, Street, Shepton Mallet and Yeovil. Generally, the accommodation will be laid out in such a way that you have your own bedroom but share other facilities with other young people as well as self-contained flats in some areas. Some of the accommodation is staffed 24 hours a day whilst some is generally unstaffed but with regular visits from support workers.
- Support in finding permanent housing, maintaining accommodation, helping with benefit claims, setting up utilities, managing money and more.
- Tenant Accreditation Scheme to help give young people the knowledge and skills they will need in order to live independently.
- Partnership working – close working relationships with colleagues in Children’s Social Care and other agencies (including services that can provide support with mental health, training and education, drug and alcohol misuse and so on).
This service is designed to prevent homelessness by providing targeted prevention measures. If prevention is not successful or possible, the service allows young people with housing and related support needs to progress along a pathway of outcome-focused needs-led provision. This is until they are able to return to the family home or sustain independent living without the need for support.
Our commitment is to provide young people with the right level of support, in the right place at the right time as well as a focus on supporting young people to make friends, build life-long networks and trusted relationships.
Finding private rented accommodation
There is a variety of private rented accommodation available throughout Somerset depending on your needs.
If you are on a low income you may be entitled to help with your housing costs through Universal Credit. How much you receive will depend on your age and circumstances.
If you are a care leaver and under 25 or you have spent 3 months or more in a hostel or refuge, you may be entitled to the one bed Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rate as opposed to the Shared Accommodation rate.
Homefinder Somerset
As a care leaver, you will receive a gold band priority on Homefinder Somerset if you are living in a short-term, supported housing project within Somerset and are deemed ready to ‘move on’ into independent accommodation.