About Us

We carefully considered the name for Futures for Shared Lives; whilst wishing to be clear and unambiguous about the service provision we wanted to build on our extensive transferrable knowledge of social care and young peoples' fostering services. 

There are decided parallels in providing a fostering and adult shared lives service and the good practice guidelines, regulations and ethos are a common factor to both services. 

Our shared philosophy is on one level very simple, for those children Looked After by Local Authorities, who may or may not have a disability, leaving your ‘home’ at 18 years of age is not always helpful and possibly not always conducive to progressing on to healthy adult life. 

Local Authorities have at their disposal mechanisms for providing longer placements; Staying Put being one option, this is not always helpful to a young person who still requires additional support, indeed whose needs do not change necessarily because they have reached their 18th birthday.

For those young people with impaired ability we feel that they need more time, often years, to continue to build on their skills, resilience and ability to cope in the world, and they appear to prosper remaining with their ‘family’, or in moving in with a new carefully matched family; considerably improving their life outcomes. 

Also for those adults who remain at home with their birth families, sometimes an adult placement or respite can be required for a multitude of reasons; ageing, unwell parents or caregivers, life changes or a regular break from the relentless role of caregiving. 

Adult placements can assist in planning for more independence as an adult, allowing a healthy distance from being continually ’parented’ by birth families where more independence is possibly more difficult to achieve.

We believe that by listening to and working closely with the adults concerned, their birth family members, friends or caregivers we can facilitate the best placement match and care package. We would wish to offer a flexible, responsive and inclusive service. 

In summary, we aim to work alongside and support those service users to achieve their own potential and feel safe and productive members of society. Indeed, as they are entitled to, we will support them to continue their education and/or working life balanced with an enjoyable social life from the bedrock of a family home with adults who understand and are champions for the continued advocacy and support of the person placed with them. Likewise, we will actively offer support, supervision and training to those adults who choose to be Shared Lives Carers.