Supporting autistic people with daily routines

The benefits of supported living for autistic people include building a tolerance for social interaction and communication, for example, accessing day services, meeting with peers and interacting with housemates and staff. Our tenants in Crewe have completed care plans, so that support staff from Accomplish Group can help them to make choices about their daily routines and structure.

Sometimes a change to restrictive or repetitive behaviours can be difficult for those in supported living, but our tenants have been helped to develop coping strategies, and are far more accepting of this when change occurs.

Support staff provide a noticeboard of events and opportunities for our tenants to get involved with, such as barbecues, parties, discos, day trips and forums. They are supported to use public transport, which is often challenging in busy, public places for autistic people. Other tolerance-boosting activities include shopping, going to cafés for lunch, trips to the marina, the gym, the swimming pool and for a haircut!

Each tenant living at our scheme have their own tasks to do to contribute to the household. They take it in turns to prepare and cook meals and bake on a weekend (of their choice). Support staff report this gives everyone involved the feel-good factor, as our tenants feel pleased when they have produced a tasty dish!

Tenants have support to clean their bedrooms, and are often learning new skills they haven’t needed before, such as basics of hoovering, emptying their bins and so on. “They really enjoy taking the bins out on a Sunday night and bringing them back in on a Monday night when they come home from day service. If the bin men are out early enough, they will exchange conversations with the bin men and tell them how hard they have been doing their recycling - which again, is a sense of accomplishment for them,” explains the scheme manager, Hubert Czupryn.

The support staff are always thinking of creative ways to make life easier for our autistic tenants, and they have introduced an innovative way for one tenant to keep on top of his laundry. He uses a timer to know when the wash is finished, so he can ask for support to hang up his washing if he needs it. Once this is dry, he will put his clothes away to the best of his ability.