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I arrive one chilly winter evening at a freshly and warmly decorated bungalow in Ayr, on an estate close to the town’s racecourse, home of the Scottish Grand National. Inside, Andrew Boyle is like many other 20 year olds at home. He’s playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on his computer. His friend, Andrew Ralph, 17, is around to see him – as usual. His mum sits in an armchair with a cup of tea, catching her breath between jobs. He wants beans for his tea – but no one has remembered to buy any.

However, Andrew has severe learning difficulties, no speech and needs physical help 24 hours a day. Yet the house I’m sitting in is Andrew’s house: not his mum’s or the council’s. And he is proud of it.

His move into independent living has been managed by Partners for Inclusion (PFI), a voluntary supported living service that was set up to help people with learning difficulties and mental health needs move on from institutional settings. “One of our principles is that a person lives in a way that makes sense for them – so we don’t do group homes. Sometimes people want to move in with a friend and that’s fine. But we don’t put people together because they have autism, epilepsy or whatever,” says service manager Hugh Torrance. 

However, as Andrew lived with his parents rather than in an institution, he marked a departure for PFI. “It’s quite easy to move people from long-stay hospitals, where, to be honest, the services have been pretty poor, and to get them a better life. But it’s a different proposition when people are moving on from a family home,” says service manager, Jim Brady.

It was also tough for Andrew’s parents and siblings. “It was almost as if we were doing him an injustice because we had got to the stage where we felt we couldn’t cope,” says Anne Boyle, Andrew’s mum. PFI placed Andrew’s support team in the family home for a year before Andrew moved out. “For us it was a nightmare having people in our house from 9am to 10pm: we couldn’t argue or fall out! But we wanted him to be an individual and it’s working better than we could ever dream of,” she says.

PFI employ a staff team that work specifically with and for each individual. “Andrew’s team works with him alone. Andrew’s team leader, Zoe McDonald, co-ordinates what happens at ground level to keep the decision-making as near to Andrew as possible. So we get into a position where we have worked ourselves out of a job, really,” says Torrance.

Andrew is one of 42 people that PFI work with – and he may well be one of the last as, according to PFI director, Doreen Kelly, only three more service users may be taken on. “To get the best out of people you need to devolve power to them – not just staff but the people we support. To do that you need smaller systems,” she says.

Empowerment, as part of the social work lexicon, is a word bandied about a lot. But Andrew Boyle is living the jargon. “We’re striving to give control back to people who get support, and move organisations out, so that they can get on living their lives rather than being part of service-land. There are a few similar organisations but generally what we’re offering is quite unique – and it really ought not to be,” says Kelly

There are many questions to answer honestly in order to offer real control to service users – and ones more taxing than those facing Andrew Boyle on his computer game. But when Anne Boyle says, “It’s important that Andrew’s happy and he is – he’s ecstatic – we can really tell,” it sounds like they, at least, have hit the jackpot. 

LESSONS LEARNED

• "Working with Andrew things were happening so quickly I was feeling that a lot of the important stuff was being lost and that we were losing the story of what was going on," says Torrance.
  A video diary turned out to be so good that interviews were added and a film took shape. Indeed, it was premiered at a local cinema with Andrew and family arriving in a limousine. "We thought other people would really benefit from this. Mum and dad were keen to share this with other families to show how we did it," adds Torrance.
• PFI staff try to behave as if a person's money is a direct payment. "We wrap services around them but take out our management fee," says Kelly.
• However, nothing is perfect. "I think genuinely we haven't got the real relationships or friendships thing going yet. The people we work with have a lot of paid people in their life. We have some people who have made some real connections with their communities but it's not across the board." says Kelly.