The Complex Lives Team in Rotherham

The Complex Lives Team is a team of four dedicated social workers, providing a holistic service offer that is person centred and asset based. The team focused on recovery, resettlement, empowerment, and inclusion, which emphasises prevention and early intervention by managing demand through proactively engaging and supporting people living with complex lives.

These are people with a combination of mutually reinforcing challenges including homelessness, drug, and alcohol misuse, offending behaviour, mental ill health and poor physical health. People in these situations have often experienced childhood trauma, family breakdown, domestic abuse, and other major life changing events.

The Complex Lives Team seek to act as change agents by trying to improve the lives of those they work with by connecting people to necessary support, ensuring anti-poverty practice and working in a solution focused manner. The support provided by the team is prompt, practical, persistent/consistent, and often intensive. We aim to try and build trusted relationships in order to assist in getting to the root cause of an individual’s complex needs. The Complex Lives Workers are often key in coordinating the involvement of partner agencies/voluntary sector whom we have identified as key in order to provide an integrated approach in order to help promote the person’s outcomes, wellbeing, and stability.

The Complex Lives Team works with working age adults who are not in receipt of care and support from other Adult Care and Integration Services or Adult Community Mental Health teams and on the whole, who are not care act eligible. Typically, the individuals that we work with do not engage with services or they tend to move chaotically between a number of services whereby engagement appears sporadic.

We work in a trauma informed way and have close links with the Trauma Resilience Services as we support those who are CSE survivors and attend weekly National Crime Agency meetings.  As a team, we work with the 3 Locality Safer Neighbourhood Teams and attend the area housing tasking meetings. We also work with the Housing Solutions Team (Homeless Sector) and we also attend Community MARAC meetings.

There is a duty rota in place in which a member of the team will assist in responding to existing cases whereby there may be a crisis or supporting those newly referred to the team who are awaiting allocation.

The Complex Lives Team aspires to:

• Improve wellbeing;
• Build upon individuals existing strengths;
• Helps individuals to live in safe, secure, and appropriate accommodation by working closely with our housing colleagues;
• Providing prompt, persistent practical and emotional support;
• Co-ordinate specialist interventions by linking in with partner agencies.

The Outcomes that the team aim to achieve is to support individuals to:

• Re-engage with family, friends, and wider community;
• Ability to set boundaries, higher resilience and improved ability to deal with setbacks;
• Improved mental health and wellbeing Improved physical health;
• More responsible use of medication or health services;
• Reduction of mental health issues (e.g. anxiety, depression, anger management etc.);
• Reduction of harmful relationships;
• Less conflict at home;
• Positive engagement with support from professionals/family/friends;
• Increased awareness of the effects of drugs and alcohol;
• Reduction in criminal behaviour;
• Reduction and where possible cessation of problematic drug and alcohol problem;
• In stable Accommodation;
• Engage with purposeful work, education, or training;
• Increased self-esteem;
• Increased self-confidence.

Reasons for Referral:

• Issues of unstable housing - The adult is at risk of eviction or already homeless but there is evidence that they are not able or willing to engage with the relevant agencies e.g., tenancy support, benefits, homeless prevention team and other partner agencies;
• Anti-Social Behaviour where the adult is a repeat victim or perpetrator;
• Issues of hoarding/self-neglect whereby it is because of the conditions and not as a result for example, physical frailty reasons;
• Promoting socio-economic rights and anti-poverty practice. Dealing with issues around finances, specifically benefits, whereby individuals are not engaging and may have been sanctioned. Consequently, they usually have no food and utilities have been disconnected;
• The adult is a survivor of Childhood Sexual Exploitation.
• Adults who misuse alcohol and/or drugs that are not referred currently connected to ROADS or who are not engaging and there are concerns around their housing situation, socio-economic issues, exploitation ASB or domestic abuse;
• Adults are referred in who may be a victim of exploitation, hate/mate crime, or cuckooing;

The Adult has low level mental health issues or mild learning disability and requires focussed time limited social work intervention, and the adult would not meet the threshold for Adult Community Mental Health Service intervention. We would not accept referrals for those with suspected or a confirmed diagnosis of organic mental health issues.