National Care Leavers Week - Taylor House

In our last post for National Care Leavers Week, we gave you an overview of all the great work we do with our young people aged between 16 and 25 years old. Now we want to give you an insight into one particular service, Taylor House.

St Christopher's Taylor House is a 16+ service in West London. It supports vulnerable young people on their final steps towards living independently.

Taylor House provides safe and secure housing, close to home, for young people starting to think about the challenges of moving into their own accommodation. The service offers low-to-medium support to those who will benefit from help with access to employment, training or education, and life skills including cooking, budgeting and cleaning.

Each young person is expected to engage with a key worker who'll design a weekly action plan for them and provide five hours of support each week. They'll have the opportunity to gain AQA awards for their achievements and their progress will be measured using St Christopher's pioneering Q-Pack and the Outcomes Star.

Young people can be referred directly or they may "step down" from services providing higher levels of support (including St Christopher's Cornock House, which shares the site).

We receive lots of positive comments about our work with young people at Taylor House. One social worker said:

"Over the past 10 months Jamie has transformed. His mental health has improved remarkably. Jamie is surrounded by support workers who have resilience and have been quick to understand his needs and how to deal with him.

St Christopher's staff never hesitate to go extra miles in support of Jamie. As a result, Jamie feels he is ready to move back to mainstream society, something that was not imaginable 10 months ago."