Our approach
A home, a relationship, and a plan that moves.
Everything we do rests on three things: a real home rather than an institution, a keyworker who sticks around, and an assessment that turns a young person's needs into measurable progress towards independent adult life.
The model
Small homes, not institutions.
We use a dispersed-housing model: small shared homes of three to four places each, alongside self-contained move-on units, close to education, employment and transport. The scale is deliberate. A young person leaving care should live somewhere that feels like a home and a neighbourhood, not a unit — a place where staff are a steady presence rather than a shift rota, and where growing up looks like everyone else's.
Our portfolio is designed to grow with commissioning demand. We open additional homes as placements require, and we cover neighbouring and out-of-area needs where local capacity is unavailable. What we never do is trade the quality of the home for the size of the contract.
Keywork & the assessment cycle
Assessment is a relationship, not a form.
Support runs as a continuous cycle of assess, plan, do and review. Weekly or fortnightly keywork sessions work the goals in the support plan; a monthly review refreshes the plan; and a formal review at least every six months re-scores every measure and aligns to the local authority's Pathway Plan review.
The needs assessment is completed with a young person, not to them — co-produced, signed, strengths-first, and never requiring anyone to retell their trauma to qualify for help.
The rhythm
- Weekly or fortnightly one-to-one keywork
- A monthly plan-and-risk refresh
- A formal, re-scored review at least every six months
- Aligned to the statutory Pathway Plan review cycle
The needs assessment
Twelve domains, one honest picture.
The assessment is the spine of the whole model. Twelve domains, each scored on the same scales, each routing to two places: a young person's needs feed the support plan, and anything that carries risk feeds the risk management plan. Nothing is recorded twice.
| # | Domain | What it captures |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Accommodation & housing history | Placement history, tenancy-readiness, and what home means to a young person |
| 2 | Education, employment & training | Status, qualifications, aspirations, barriers, and bursary awareness |
| 3 | Physical health | GP, dentist and optician registration, long-term conditions, sexual health |
| 4 | Mental & emotional health | Current and past support, the transition to adult services, a wellbeing measure at intake |
| 5 | Substance use | Context, the young person's own view, and readiness to change |
| 6 | Independence & daily-living skills | A scored baseline across cooking, budgeting, bills, transport and admin — the spine of the move-on plan |
| 7 | Finance & benefits | Income stability, correct benefit rates, debts, and entitlements like the Setting Up Home Allowance |
| 8 | Family & social relationships | A support-network map, positive relationships, and any harmful or controlling ones |
| 9 | Identity, culture & religion | Ethnicity, faith, language, immigration status, gender identity and sexuality — affirming by default |
| 10 | Offending & justice | Any justice involvement, handled with a strengths-based, desistance approach |
| 11 | Exploitation & contextual safety | A screen for county lines, cuckooing, exploitation and trafficking |
| 12 | Emotional & behavioural resilience | What matters to a young person — coping, hopes and talents; the Outcomes Star at intake |
Each domain maps onto the eight statutory Pathway Plan dimensions, so our assessment dovetails with — and never replaces — the local authority's own plan.
The practice model
Three frameworks, operationalised.
We name these because reviewers look for them, and we operationalise them because a framework that is only named is decoration.
Trauma-informed practice
Built on SAMHSA's six principles and the Four Rs — realise, recognise, respond, and resist re-traumatisation. In daily life that means language that never labels ("non-compliant" and "absconder" have no place here), behaviour understood as communication, and reflective supervision and secondary-traumatic-stress support treated as organisational duties.
Psychologically Informed Environment
Homeless Link's PIE model: relationships as the tool for change, staff support and reflective practice, a non-institutional physical environment, an explicit psychological framework, and evidence-generating practice — with a reflective-practice log kept as standing quality evidence.
Transitional safeguarding
The framework built for the 18–25 boundary. Turning 18 does not end a young person's vulnerability — it only changes which system is obliged to respond. Every concern gets a dual test, and "doesn't meet the adult threshold" is never treated as "no action".
Safeguarding
Built for the gap young people fall through.
Our cohort sits between the children's and adults' safeguarding systems. Our whole safeguarding approach is designed to bridge that gap deliberately, rather than let anyone fall through it.
"At 18, a young person moves — overnight — from the child safeguarding system to the adult safeguarding system. But risk does not respect that birthday. A 19-year-old being groomed into county lines, sexually exploited, or coerced into crime is in exactly the same danger they were at 17."
Milestone transitional safeguarding policy
Where the adult threshold is not met, we do not stop
We use a young person's continuing leaving-care relationship, multi-agency working, contextual safeguarding, and — for exploitation — the police, the National Referral Mechanism and community safety partnerships to keep them safe. We name and challenge adultification bias: treating a care leaver as more streetwise, culpable or resilient than they are.
Age is a zero-tolerance boundary
We never accommodate anyone under 18. Age is verified from documentary evidence at the point of referral; for disputed-age cases we rely on the local authority's Merton-compliant assessment and apply a simple precautionary rule — if in doubt, do not admit.
Exploitation, missing episodes and allegations
A care leaver in a first independent tenancy is a prime target for cuckooing, so our anti-exploitation response is explicit and rehearsed. Missing episodes are handled on an adult, risk-based basis — no fixed clock, a proportionate response, and a voluntary return conversation that updates the risk picture. Any allegation against a member of staff is routed to both the adult and children's frameworks, and we hold the legal duty to refer where someone is removed from work because of harm.
Move-on
A step down, not a cliff edge.
Independence is built in stages: higher-support shared living, then lower-support, then a young person's own tenancy with floating support. The scored independence-skills baseline drives the pace, with defined trigger points for each step down.
And we keep the door open. A retained trusted worker means a young person can come back for advice long after they have moved on — a Staying-Close quality even where it has not been separately commissioned.
Outcomes
Distance travelled, four ways.
We measure progress on four re-scored measures — the needs-and-support average, the independence-skills baseline, the Outcomes Star, and a validated wellbeing measure — reported as change scores at every formal review and aggregated into a published quarterly dashboard.
Education, employment and training progress is benchmarked against the national care-leaver gap, so our outcomes are read against the challenge, not in isolation.
See the model in practice.
Whether you place young people or commission services, we are happy to walk you through the assessment, the safeguarding spine and the reporting in detail.