Going the extra mile – insight into our Wallingford day hub

Our day hub in Wallingford supports people with a wide range of learning disabilities on a 1:1 or 1:3 ratio of support. Adults who attend our hub may be moderately or more profoundly affected by their disability. We provide a wide range of meaningful activities for the people we support and we have a large training kitchen (providing cakes for our tearoom), music room, art room, IT suite, sensory room, general activity rooms and two gardens.

We recently fundraised to purchase a lightweight, mobile hoist scales, which we keep at the hub for use by people we support and their carers, many of whom are physically disabled. The scales enable us to keep a track of people’s weight as part of their usual personal care routine when they are attending the service. The availability of the scales means there is no need for time consuming visits to the nearest hospital with scales. Gaynor Williams, Manager at our Wallingford hub says: ‘The scales have saved the people we support a lot of time travelling to and from hospital, they enable us to weigh people in a familiar environment with dignity. They are a great addition to the service we can offer adults with disabilities. Our local physiotherapist and learning disability nurse are really impressed that we can offer this’.

Staff work closely with Style Acre’s speech and language therapists to develop and improve communication to suit the needs of individuals. Staff are in regular contact with carers and we pride ourselves on our strong relationship with families. With a large fleet of vehicles, we collect from and drop-off to an individual’s home. This ensures consistency of support and good communication between the service and carers or family.