Azure Support Services
Azure Support Services provides a range of services to young people (13+) and adults who have learning and other disabilities.
There are a range of supported housing services covering registered care homes, registered domicillary supported housing and supported living services. These are located in various locations in the North East of England and Northumberland - these include: Cramlington, Hexham, Newcastle upon Tyne and Washington.
Azure also provides support to people to access community based activities.
Community Access:
This service provides a flexible service to people over the minimum school leaving age, and who have a disability.The predominant client group is learning disability, however this service provides support to people with other needs.
Supported Housing
There are four departments within the housing service.
Cramlington housing
This was the first service to be established within Azure and is made up of a row of 12 houses, 11 providing tenancies for adults with disabilities and one house providing office accommodation for the staff.
This service can support up to 42 tenants. Ten of the houses support 4 tenants in each house and one house has 2 tenants.
The houses are staffed on a peripatetic basis aiming to provide flexible levels of support to meet a range of individual needs.
Tynedale housing
This was the second housing to be established within Azure and originally offered housing to people who were resettling from long term hospital.
The houses provide a range of support, mostly on a 24 hour staffed basis but also some peripatetically staffed. Initially 16 people were supported within this service, but there have been a number of new services established in recent ly and this department now supports an additional xxxx tenants.
Washington
The two houses in Washington are registered care homes and provide support to 12 people. These two houses, one purpose built, were established in 1994 and have become well established within Azure.
Newcastle
This service, known as the Supported Living Department is the most recent development within the housing service and is the most modern approach to providing supported housing. Supported Living is made up of 7 houses and supports 12 tenants.
Contracts for support are individual to each tenant and several houses are single occupancy.
The fundamental difference relating to Supported Living is that the tenancy and the support are independent of one another. All the other housing services offer support that is linked to the housing provision.
Where Azure is the managing agent for the Housing Association, there is a referral system for accessing a tenancy. All referrals are made via Care Management.
