Hi readers, it’s Emily, Kerry and William here this week talking more about supported housing. Check out our first article about this last week if you missed it.
This week we wanted to talk about how having the right support to help us live is hugely important. It can be very hard for us to understand things, and we want information presented in ways which allow us to make good choices.
The first thing we need to understand is our Tenancy Agreement! It’s best if they are in Easy Read, and we have people to talk it through. For me, Emily, we had Laura D from People First Dorset go through ours, which was lucky as they had one off funding to help oversee our move. Normally we’d all rely on good support from parents or support workers, which luckily we all have. But what if you have a parent or support worker who’d struggle to help? What then?
It can also be hard to approach the housing provider if we have questions, so we need good support to ask for things and speak up for ourselves here too. Without the right help from and people who ‘get it’, we’d be stuck. Sometimes we feel frustrated to not understand things on our own, that we even need support. It’s also annoying when some people just assume we can understand, or equally if they assume we aren’t as able as we are.
The housing associations sometimes contact us by letter, to arrange a time to check the property. Although these aren’t Easy Read, they are quite clear. The thing is, I, Kerry, can’t remember when they checked my house, and have no idea who my housing officer is any more, like I used to do.
Final thoughts on housing next week, so please tune in!
The writers of the Our View column are supported in their editing by People First Dorset - a charity led and run by people with learning disabilities with support from staff.
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