Adam is a young man who came to us after living at home with his family. Adam is a young man with Autism, a Severe Learning Disability and high sensory needs. While Adams’s family had some help prior, it had not been anywhere near enough and had led to a breakdown of the support he had in place, which had a significant impact on his family. That’s when Godfrey Care stepped in. 

We assessed Adam and identified a number of unmet needs that had been missed by previous assessments and noted how these significantly impacted his day-to-day life. Adam was doubly incontinent, engaged in physically aggressive behaviours towards family and others, and spent his days watching cartoons as his educational and social care placements had deemed him too high risk to support. By looking beyond how Adam had been reported, we saw a young man with vast potential who was entitled to a good, happy life, so we set ourselves the mission of working jointly with Adam and his family to make this a reality. 

Through working with his parents, our staff completed a specialist transition for Adam, supporting him to move into our services. Following a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA) by our PBS Clinical Lead and a Sensory Assessment by Occupational Therapy, it was identified that Adams’s undiagnosed sensory needs were significantly impacting his well-being, preventing him from engaging in everyday tasks, and his lack of assessed communication needs meant that he had an inability to communicate his distress. Through undertaking a teaching programme of the PECS approach with Adam, followed by adapting the environment to meet his sensory needs, Adams’s behaviours reduced from 5 incidents per week to an average of 1 per month. 

Through understanding his needs, Adam could again become part of his community, undertake activities, learn skills and access further education. Implementing the Active Support model with Adams’s staff team meant that he also moved from tasks being completed for him to those completed with him, increasing his everyday living skills and further widening his lifelong opportunities.