There is lots of information available about support that does not need an assessment through the Kirklees local offer and council website. This provided links to community plus - wellness service – groups and activities universal services. If this is all the support a person needs, then they do not need to request additional guidance.
- Local Offer Home
- Information and Advice
- Preparing for Adulthood - general information
Getting support with preparing for adulthood (if you have an EHCP)
Starting the conversation
When you have the year 9 EHCP review it is important to start to think about life as an adult. There are guides that help to start these conversations with your SENCO. The four key themes are:
- education/ employment
- independent living
- participating in society
- being as healthy as possible.
Who can help?
If you are going to need support to prepare for adult life then your SENCO can support you to work out who it is going to be important to have involved in your year 9 discussions. You may just need information, but guidance and more specialist support is available. You can invite people to provide this to your review. If you don't already have social care involved you or someone on your behalf will need to contact Community Health and Social Care (formerly known as Gateway to Care) tell us a bit about yourself to start with.
Planning
- If you already have support and have complex needs you will need a lot of support to prepare for adult life. Your children's worker will invite a Specialist adult pathway worker to help plan this journey. Someone from this team will attend your year 9 review.
- If you find making decisions difficult people who know you well can be involved to support making the decisions that are right for you.
- If you have invited someone to provide guidance they will use the information you share to help you know what support is available in adulthood. Not everyone will need social care support but there are non assessed services available to everyone these are called universal services.
Getting the plan set up
- If you have complex needs you can have an assessment so these needs are fully understood and that the right support and funding is set up.
- You may have health needs and a continuing health needs assessment can be considered.
- There is a decision making group (DMG) that helps services to work together to know what you might need and what they need to get ready for your adult life.
What happens next?
- Everyone's journey is different and sometimes plans need to change so it is important we keep talking and review the plans.
Advice and information prior to 18 will be given by Duty and Advice and after 18 it would be Gateway To Care. The Enablement team can be an offer from 16.
The Specialist adult pathway team are a skilled team who support people that already have social care support and complex needs to transition from children to adult settings. The children’s’ worker will contact this team to invite them to the year 9 review.
Community Health and Social Care (formerly known as Gateway to Care) is where people call for support and guidance from adult social care.
Contact Community Health and Social Care on 0300 304 5555.
After 5pm (4.45 on a Friday) - If your call is Urgent you can still telephone 01484 414933 as all calls are diverted to our Emergency Duty Team
You can also go to the Customer Service Centre, Civic Centre 3, Market Street, Huddersfield, HD1 2YZ
Some people find it difficult to understand the decision they need to make and may need an assessment to work out if they need other people who know them well to support them with this. This is called a Mental Capacity Assessment– sometimes the assessment finds that the person cannot make the decision, and this means the decision needs to be made for them. The people who make the decision need to know the person well and agree that it is in their best interest. If people cannot agree or the decision is complex, then this can go to the court of protection for a judge to make the decision.
Also see this page about making decisions.
This is a group of people from Children’s’ and Adults Education, Health, and Social care services who meet so they can work out the map the pathway to adulthood. This will help to make sure that decisions that need to be made about funding and resources are made together.
This is considered when a person has a lot of complex health needs, these may have been identified in childhood. However, the adult Continuing health care assessment is different to the children’s which means the outcomes may not be the same.