Community Enablement Team

Kirklees Council's Community Enablement Team is a service for adults and young people with learning disabilities and/ or autistic spectrum conditions. 

Enablement helps people to become as independent as possible by learning new skills or develop existing skills. The approach is strengths-based and person-centred and, where appropriate, it involves working with the person's family and friends. 

The team supports the person to identify what they can do for themselves, where there is potential to develop and plans how they can be supported to do so. 

We can start working with young people from the age of 16 and there is no upper age limit. We work across the whole of Kirklees to offer targeted 1:1 support on a short-term basis. The team usually work Monday to Friday 8:45 to 17:15 however if there is a specific need to work earlier or later such as independent travel training, we can do so.

We work closely with occupational therapists, social workers, the learning disability health team and other professionals.

We also work closely with the My Life Team, which helps young people with an Education Health and Care Plan to prepare for adulthood, and with the assistive technology team to help people to access any technology they may need to support their independence.

The work takes place in people's homes or in the community to help them to develop the skills that are important to them.
These may include:

• Independent Travel Training
• Cooking and healthy eating
• Shopping
• Money management
• Development of routines
• Use of mobile phones
• Managing health and medication (this may involve working alongside health professionals

The enablement offer is a short-term intervention that is free to access – should longer term support be required this would be accessed via a Care Act Assessment, a financial assessment will then indicate if there is any charge for the person towards their ongoing support needs.

We support anyone aged 16 and above,who have a learning disability or autism, (however if they do not have a formal diagnosis, we would need to be clear that the person would receive significant benefit from an enablement intervention).
The person needs to be motivated to engage with enablement.

The criteria for our service is that the person is 16 and above and has a diagnosed or undiagnosed learning disability and or autism. A referral can be made through Gateway to Care or we have an on line referral form that can be found on our page on the Kirklees website.