Welcome to Plus One (South West) Ltd

Plus One is a small but experienced and knowledgeable company which consists of three houses offering specialist care to a maximum of six young people. The organisation has developed from its original status as a foster care provision and benefits from twelve years of experience within this specialist field of residential care. The size of our organisation does not mask our huge effort and undefeated commitment and Plus One is passionate about providing supportive care to children and young people within our care.

Plus One provides placements for young people with emotional difficulties. These difficulties, which occasionally manifest due to early life experiences, are often considered as significant barriers which impede progress and development towards the future. Therefore our placements for young people are designed to deal with more extreme behaviours than most other provisions.

Each young person lives in a modern detached 4 bedroom house in a peaceful, rural setting or on the periphery of a town. All properties accommodate a maximum of two young people to live in each house which is staffed on a 2:2 or 2:1 basis. These teams are of mixed gender and staff members work 16 hour sessions with 8 hour sleepovers.

For young people working towards independence, their home may be within a town to enable them to access local facilities e.g. launderette or bus service. The locations of these residential homes have been carefully selected in relation to the facilities and local resources which can have a great impact on the young person’s behaviour. Such settings have several advantages including: the potential to set up structured daily routines, continuous observation of the young person’s behaviour, easier control over reinforcement contingencies, higher levels of employee and young person’s interaction with greater control over the implementation of behaviour programmes through employee supervision and monitoring. We are able to offer a dynamic and flexible approach, according to the specific needs of each young person, designing and negotiating the most appropriate team to address all the young persons’ needs.

The young people are involved in the day to day running of their homes and are expected and encouraged to participate in many of the activities which promote autonomy and independence such as shopping, budgeting, cooking and domestic chores. Each young person’s home is run with ‘normality’ being the key factor i.e. their home should operate as close to family life as possible. The young people are encouraged to look after the house car and conduct garden maintenance too.

Plus One is committed to preparing each young person for eventual progression into life as independent adults. We have a strong belief in the Equality of Opportunity and will undertake to work with young people from all ethnic minority groups.

In alliance with Social Services Departments we encourage contact between our young people and their family members in order to prevent feelings of loss or isolation. We endeavour to support families during their time of need therefore we assist when necessary and provide transport, support and supervise visits between young people and families or invite family members to visit the home. Family visits are usually positive times when the young people can demonstrate their domestic abilities but also display appropriate behaviour which illustrate considerable amounts of change from previous behaviours. Three days is usually our maximum visiting duration to the residential home.

We provide the following services:

Specialist Child Care and Therapeutic Intervention

Activity Exploration

Emergency Placements and Planned Placements