About Us

Supporting You to Thrive is passionate about Person Focused ​Planning, Social Prescribing and Support Brokerage.

Supporting You to Thrive believes that Everyone should have the ​right to have Hope and a Future and that Everyone has the right ​to lead a good life, where you have the opportunity to fulfil your ​dreams and ambitions. To be heard, to have choices and to live a ​life where you thrive, not merely survive.

With our Person Focused Planning, Social Prescribing and ​Support Brokerage, Supporting You to Thrive gives you the ​opportunity to have a Voice and to use it.

We believe that everyone has the right to Thrive.

About Me

Hi I am Glen,

I am the creator of Supporting You To Thrive, I am also a husband and the dad of two ​wonderful children, and a crazy cat who thinks he's a dog.

I have been working in Health and Social Care for more than 20 years.

I first started out in my early twenties, offering some support to my Grandfather who was ​showing some early signs of dementia. During this time I was doing shift work, this didn't ​allow enough flexibility to support my grandparents.

I stopped working shifts and found a job working as a community carer for a little care ​agency in my local village. The majority of the people I was working with were older ​people, however I was asked to support one young man with Down Syndrome to attend ​the Gateway Club on a Wednesday evening.

This introduced me to the idea of working with people with disabilities. During one ​conversation with my uncle, a head teacher at a SEND School, he recognised my ​enthusiasm and suggested that maybe I should pursue a career in health and social ​care.

Taking his advice onboard I started working for an organisation which provided specialist ​support for people living with Prader- Willi Syndrome, associated learning disabilities ​and learning difficulties.

This opportunity provided me with valuable experience, where I learnt a lot about my ​own character as much as anything else.

I then went on to work in a residential home for older people living with a learning ​disability, before embarking on an adventure working in New Zealand.

Whilst living in New Zealand I gained new experiences working with a young father who ​following a stroke was learning to live with an acquired brain injury.

Working alongside a specialist rehab team, I am pleased to report that he made a very good ​recovery and has since gone on to make one of the ideas I suggested to aid his recovery ​into his new career.

During my time living in New Zealand, I also worked for one of the largest providers of ​support to people living with a disability and or/ Autistic.

The positive examples provided by my colleagues, who demonstrated what authentic ​person centred care really looks like has stayed with me throughout my career.

Once back in England I started working for a provider of day opportunities to Adults with a ​learning disability and or/ Autistic.

This opportunity allowed me the freedom to demonstrate and build on what I had lbeen ​earning in New Zealand. During this period of working I was really able to demonstrate my ​creative side, ideas and leadership qualities.

As well as build trusted relationships with the people we support and their families, I was ​able to take on a leadership role, setting an example to others of what authentic, creative, ​collaborative person centred support looks like.

Encouraging many of the people I worked alongside to realise their potential, explore their ​dreams and aspirations, think outside the box, and think beyond the time constraints of ​service provider land.

Grow

Helping your organisation to grow, sewing the ​seeds of positive change, gathering feedback, ​supporting the development of strategy and ​organisational cultural change, putting the ideas, ​views, and wishes of the people and families of ​those who access services at the centre of any ​organisational decisions.

Supporting with the design of Accessible ​Information, these might include, Easy Read ​Surveys, Welcome Packs, Brochures, Guide ​Books, Policies, and Procedure.

Offering help with the creation and leadership of ​Lived Experience Steering Groups.

Utilising different approaches to communication, ​including PECs, Animated Videos and the ​Creation of Social Stories.

Community

Our Social Prescribing Offer provides people with opportunities to connect with their local communities, ​offering approaches that assist people to overcome any potential barriers.

Thinking outside the box, and offering support with building connections.

What is Social Prescribing?

Social Prescribing is often offered as an alternative or used alongside traditional treatment methods.

In New Zealand, Australia and the USA it is broadly termed Green prescription.

The idea being that getting outside, connecting with nature and connecting with people is good for our mental health and ​wellbeing. It's about looking for different ways to help you manage your life, to go to different activities and become part of ​different communities.

How do we do Community Connection/Social Prescribing?

At Supporting You to Thrive we prefer to use the words Community Connection, as these words have more relevance to ​what we actually do. We understand that not everyone might associate themselves with being a socially able person, but ​given the right space, time and support, they may wish to explore their special interests and share this experience with ​other like minded people.

We recognise that in todays society loneliness is one of the biggest contributors to anxiety and depression.

This has been identified to have increased significantly since the start of the global pandemic.

We also understand that for some people it is not possible to be simply offered information about activities and then be ​expected to go it alone. We recognise that for some people there are barriers which are preventing them from making ​these steps forward. What can be seen as something "every day" and "simple" for some people in society, for others ​making that phone call or going to that activity can feel impossible to achieve.

That is why Supporting You to Thrive are offering something a bit different, we will help you to identify "What Matters to ​You", we will support you on your journey of discovering what interests you have, what activities you might like to explore ​and what communities you might like to engage with.

We will offer support with contacting activity and service providers.

We can also offer support with finding work, training, paid employment and volunteering opportunities.

We will offer positive encouragement and coaching. The importance of this can easily be overlooked- the power of ​someone believing in you and supporting you can be life changing.

We can explore activities by thinking "outside the box", things that might not be offered by the traditional service providers.

We can talk about your Big and Small goals, what are your Dreams?

We can talk about any obstacles you think you might have in achieving your goals, and we can explore how we can ​overcome them.

We can work in a way and at a pace which works for you.

We can support you with introductions to Service Providers and provide a chaperone service for up to six sessions. After ​these six sessions we can reflect together on how you feel the sessions have gone- the positives and the challenges. ​Moving forward we will then co-create an Action Plan for your future, information in the Action Plan can be used as ​supporting evidence for a local authority eligibility assessment.

Support Brokerage

What is a Support Broker?

Support Brokers act as Independent Facilitators working alongside you, supporting you to live the life you want to lead. We work directly for you- if you're a person ​living with a disability, family, a carer or an older person.

We support you to stay in control, to understand and explore a whole range of opportunities and to confidently take action to achieve your desired outcomes.

As Support Brokers, our ultimate aim is to support you to have the confidence and belief to take full control of you own life.

What can we offer you as a Support Broker?

As a fully trained and accredited Support Broker, Glen and his team can help you look at your life through a different lens and help you map out your future in the ​way that you want.

We do not come with any hidden agendas or any allegiance to the Local Authority or Service Providers.

However at Supporting You to Thrive, we recognise the importance of building and maintaining good relationships with Local Authorities and the Service ​Providers. We can help you overcome any difficulties you might have experienced, so that you know your voice is not only heard, but you are being listened to.

We are here to facilitate you to be in driving seat of your journey and not to pass any judgement on your personal circumstances. We offer Person Centred ​Planning/ Support Planning; Circles of Support; Advice, Guidance, Signposting and Information in various formats. Signposting means that we will research and ​find out about activities that you might not necessarily have known about.

You are in the driving seat to steer your life in the direction you want, you get to design, create and take ownership your personalised support plan, to include all ​those essential items which can help you to lead an ordinary life as well as exploration of those dreams and aspirations which could help you work towards leading ​a your best life.

Support Brokerage aims to make sure you are fully involved in the planning processes, advocating for transparency so that you are fully aware of what is ​happening and not feeling in the dark or left feeling disappointed.

One added extra is you know those long assessment forms using acronyms which nobody outside service provider land really understands, a Support Broker will ​look at all those details with you, we can translate information into a method which works best for you and make sure everything is fully understood.

A Support Broker can help you manage those difficult telephone conversations with all the relevant services and we don't mind sitting on the phone and listening ​to that really awful on-hold music, whilst you can get on with rest of your day..

Following your local authority eligibility assessment, you should have been provided with what is called an indicative budget.

We can use this figure as a starting point, we can explore how much things cost, we can get creative and find ways of doing things which offer you the life you ​want to lead.

We can see whether the indicative budget is realistic to achieve what you need, if the budget needs reviewing, we can advocate and provide evidence when we ​send it back to the local authority finance department for review.

We can find out what is happening within your local communities and what grants and funding might be available which could help make the budget work better for ​you. This will hopefully mean you can start to set your sights on achieving your dreams and aspirations.

Once we have completed this aspect of the support plan we can then check and check again that we haven’t missed anything and then send it off to the local ​authority finance department to be presented to a panel for what we call signing off.

This is where every aspect of the personalised support plan and budget gets reviewed by a panel to make sure the plan supports all of your identified needs, whilst ​staying within the budget or at least provides supporting evidence as to why the budget needs to be reviewed.

Hopefully the budget will be signed off and then we can really start to put all your planning into action. If it doesn’t get signed off by the local authority, it doesn’t ​mean that we can’t still achieve a really good outcome for you. A Support Broker will advocate for you and find out the reasons why and will help you with ​challenging this decision. It might mean we need a bit more evidence to support a certain aspect of your personalised support plan and we might need to give ​some reasons as to why you wanting to do something is of benefit to your health and wellbeing and by doing the things that you want will also offer the local ​authorities some potential cost savings in the future.

An example of what a personalised support plan will look like can be provided on request

We can meet you where and in a way that you feel most comfortable. If you prefer we can include people who are close to you- we may sometimes refer to this as ​your Circle of Support.

Your Circle of Support can include whoever is important to you- from family members to a neighbour. When we put your Support Plan together with you, we will ​ensure that that all the information needed for the Local Authority is also included, we will work with you in whatever way suits you best, and we will make sure that ​you are completely comfortable with every step of your journey that is taken.

We can tailor the Support Brokerage package to meet your needs. You are in charge of what direction you want to take this opportunity. We are here to facilitate ​and support your journey.

Feedback and Recommendations

Contact Us

For more information please contact Glen via email

glenrichards@supportingyoutothrive.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/glen-richards-82a44a230