How we support you

Support you receive by age
Ages 16 to 18 - The pathway plan
As you get older you will be thinking about your future. Within 3 months of you turning 16, your social worker will have completed a combined needs assessment and pathway plan.
Your care plan together with information from the most recent assessment will form the basis of the needs assessment.
The pathway plan outlines what your future goals are and how we will support you to achieve them. This plan starts at age 16. It is reviewed every 6 months by your social worker until you are 18, when your personal advisor (PA) takes over.
Your pathway plan will focus on:
- where you live now and where you would like live in the future
- your education, training and employment - support, aspirations and goals
- relationships & friendships - keeping in touch with those who are important to you and including them in planning for what support they can offer
- your independence skills - who is supporting you and how are you doing
- your health and wellbeing includes your health needs and planning for transition at 18
- your immigration status including progress, entitlements and possible outcomes
- your citizenship including confirmation, progress, planning and if actions are required
- participation- interests, hobbies and anything else important to you
Ages 18 to 21 - How we keep in touch with you
Before turning 18, your social worker will be visiting you every 6 weeks and you will have their contact details. If you are living in settled circumstances, they may visit you every 3 months. Your PA will meet you when you turn 17. Your PA will visit you every 8 weeks and more if needed.
When you turn 18, your social worker will stop visiting you. Your PA will continue to visit you at least every 8 weeks up. Your PA will meet with you as often as you need and stay in contact between visits. This may be by text, mobile, email, Skype or Whatsapp.
You and your PA will agree how you want to keep in contact with each other between visits. Your PA will continue your pathway planning up to the age of 21. If you would like ongoing support. or if you are in education this can continue up to the age of 25.
Ages 21 to 25
When you turn 21, if you are not in education, your PA will talk to you about whether you wish for their support to continue. If you do, this is fine, they will continue to support you. If you choose to stop seeing them, you can come back to us at any point up to the age of 25 and request a PA again.
If you are in education, the law states we must continue to provide a PA to you until you complete your education. If you are 21 and still in education, you can agree how often you will see your PA, but we would like this to be a minimum every 3 months so we can check your needs are met.
Age 25 and over
If you are not in education your PA will no longer be able to visit you and complete pathway planning.
We will still be here for you and you can contact us at any time on our duty line. We will do our best to support and advise you.
We would also love to hear about what you have been doing and achieving.
Your right to say no to support
When you turn 18, you may decide you do not wish to keep in touch, this is your right, but the law states we must do all we can to keep in touch with you until you are 21 or up to 25 if you are in education.
We will talk to you about how we can keep in touch to make sure you are okay and have the right support in place.