About Out Leaving Care Accommodation
About Our Home, Our Services
We are a private limited company founded in 2018, to create brighter futures for children and young people. We work across the West Sussex providing specialist support services, all designed for young people leaving care. We work alongside young people to support their development, grow their confidence and reach their full potential. Our work is shaped by the ‘Outcome Star’ principles of supporting change. The Director represents the evidence-base behind our practice; Outcome Star is for the meaningful outcomes for with young people; and the tools symbolise how we equip young people for real life by empowering them to make decisions.
Who is Havenvale?
Our approach to support
We really care about children and young people. Our commitment to providing excellent support has been our mission – we ask young people what they think, pilot our services, and develop best practice to share with the sector.
Our approach to young people’s social care reflects our values. Working in this way allows us to build trust and empower people to do their best, whatever their role.
Our mission
Our vision, mission, and values
Havenvale vision is for every young person to be safe, loved & happy, to achieve their potential and have a bright future.
Our mission is to create brighter futures for young people. We do this by providing young people can feel safe and cared for. We support them to make positive relationships which give them the confidence to succeed.
We care about young people and our staff.
We know that trusting relationships transform lives, and our staff and carers work to promote positive relationships with young people, and their families and friends. We are always looking to improve how we work together within Havenvale and how we work with our commissioners and supporters.
We are respectful of every individual, and value the strengths in everyone.
Our approach is founded on a commitment to individual human rights. We value our teams for what they bring and the way they support young people to be who they want to be.
We are professional and committed to reflection and continuous learning.
We have high standards, and we learn and improve by reflecting together.
We are flexible and agile so that we can be fit for the future.
We do everything we can to respond to the individual and changing needs of the young people we look after, and to respond to what each of our commissioners want us to deliver.
We are honest about what we can do, and optimistic about the future.
We don’t promise what we can’t deliver, and we strive to achieve more.
We are creative, and passionate about positive change.
The best insights into how to create change come when we listen to young people. We do things together and have fun together so that we can create energy and enthusiasm for change. We are innovative, push boundaries, and use data and evidence to continually improve.
We thought it was important that the strategy properly reflects Havenvale’s by being participative, aligned with our ways of working, and with young people at the very centre. Young people and staff from across the organisation have had their say on the strategy so that it is built upon ideas that will benefit the people we work with, now and in the future.
Our Aims
Young people have told us that it’s the relationships with carers in our supported that make their house feel like homes. Over the next five years we want to offer more excellent homes to even more care leavers. We will do this by focusing on growing our supported to provide services to double the number of young people.
We will develop clinical therapeutic input across all of our services, so young people, carers and staff receive the expert advice and support they need, when they need it. Building on our existing strengths in attachment theory and social pedagogy, we will partner with mental health organisations to develop holistic, empowering, relationship-centred ways to improve emotional wellbeing.
Our staff succeed with some of the most excluded young people through relationship-centred, creative approaches to learning that equip them for life in the world. We will increase capacity in the education & life skills teams to support more young people to achieve.
We will collaborate with young people to help make each step of their journey to independence easier, maintaining important relationships with people that matter most, whether friends, family, carers, or Havenvale’s staff.
We will continue to invest in training and supporting our staff to enhance learning and develop skills to promote growth and career progression.
Support Into Employment
Supporting care leavers into work
Being a care leaver is not easy. Teenagers as young as 16 have to find somewhere to live, keep up with college and work, and look after themselves, often without the support of a family behind them if things go wrong. They are more likely to struggle with poor mental health and low self-esteem, so having all this responsibility can be overwhelming.
But now they have someone on their side: our Support Into Employment team. We are giving care leavers the opportunity to learn workplace skills and find jobs they enjoy and can sustain.
How do the team help?
Leaving care is not an isolated event; it is a process that we prepare young people for as best as we can. Support Into Employment helps care leavers navigate the complicated world of job hunting and benefits, whilst building their self-confidence and helping them decide what they would like to do. Working alongside our semi-independent homes and Aftercare service, the team get to know care leavers and their interests so they can find the right jobs for them.
The teamwork in a variety of ways to offer individualised support to each young person.
Professionals can all be guilty of encouraging young people to do things before they are quite ready. Entering the workplace too soon can increase the likelihood of the placement breaking down and knock young people’s confidence, sometimes irreparably.
Instead, our team provide employability skills sessions to care leavers so they can understand what is expected of them at work. Learning these new skills enables them to recognise the value they can bring to a job and boosts their self-esteem.
Once the young person is confident enough to trial the world of work, our team identify ways they can find out about the roles they are interested in. The team have strong relationships with local businesses and Government departments, who then offer work experience and shadowing days to care leavers. Opportunities like this can open up more options for young people, from work placements to regular volunteering to full-time or part-time work.
Havenvale’s has collaborated with the Jobcentre and the Benefits Office to increase professionals’ understanding of the challenges care leavers face. Together, the agencies have made changes so that there are less barriers for care leavers and we can now negotiate arrangements for young people on an individual basis. This partnership shows young people that we ALL want them to succeed and have a bright future.
If young people are finding the workplace overwhelming, they may not be confident enough to share their experiences. So our team are there for them to confide in, and we work closely with employers to keep them updated and suggest ways they can offer additional support. On occasions when placements do need to end, we work with the employer and young person to make sure both sides understand the decision.
Because of this placements are less likely to end negatively: if young people have support from both Havenvale’s and their employer to stay resilient in the face of challenges, they are more likely to thrive in their job and acknowledge everything they can achieve in the future.