Do you think with regards to disability benefits when at your medical assessment if you live in supported living / group honme and have a large support package from social services would you be considered low functioning in terms of your illness? What’s kind of people live in group home?
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Hey @bobbilly. I used to be jimbob.
To my knowledge you have to be experiencing a great deal of challenges to be placed in a group home in the U.K. I do think it helps when it comes to benefit assessments
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I lived in a group home twice. You just need doctors recommendations and intake stuff. You get all different functioning at the group home. Some people have trouble getting up the stairs and low functioning and others seem completely fine but are sz.
Maybe different here in 
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With the organization that I belong to, there are 2 types of housing available.
One for low functioning people, supervised (group home)
Another for higher functioning people
(Supportive Housing) more independence.
I qualified for supportive housing.
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I wouldn’t worry about low or high functioning as this can vary across different areas of daily living. For example you live in a group home and are planning to go to India. I live independently but get a lot of support from my stepdaughter and a care agency. Some might say I’m higher functioning than you therefore. However no way could I cope with even planning to go to somewhere like India let alone doing it.
I would say the main consideration is are you getting the help and support you need in the group home irrespective of whether that makes you high or low functioning being there.
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I’m even doubting my own ability to travel to India, certainly my supported living manager don’t think I have the capacity to manage if anything goes wrong. I have a multidisciplinary meeting with my care team on the 31st of May to discuss the safeguards around if anything goes wrong while In India. I’m certain they think that if they don’t let me go I’m going to push boundaries and go anyway without their support and blessing, if anything does happen I won’t have a support network in place. I know if my pdoc says I can’t go and I ignore his advice I won’t be able to get travel insurance, he knows that places me in more danger if I become psychotic because they will be unable to bring me back to the U.K. He can’t stipulate in my community treatment order conditions that I can’t travel abroad, only that I take my depot.
I want to go to India more the anything. When I was 21 and 23 I spent four and half months traveling around India on both occasions before my very first psychotic episode.
The thing that I worry about the most is I’m unsure if I’m really ill or just have catastrophic thinking? I’m so worried about my care team having secret folders on me or hiding information from me, I’m so certain they are! Plus I’m worried about being fitted up for a crime I didn’t commit. I have a Bluetooth speaker I forgot to turn off and and it bleeped and the very first thought that came in my head was that it was a spie device, I basically have to reality check. I have to reality check because sometimes I’m uncertain if I heard a voice or if it was real. I have to try really hard not to think about religious stuff because it becomes a obsessive circle with me thinking about it all night keeping me wide awake. This feet’s my delusional thoughts. I have to monitor my moods also.
I feel like if I don’t go to India I’m wasting my life but I do worry about becoming over stimulated and going psychotic, that would leave me very vulnerable over there but the need to go is great.
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Alternatively I can knock the India trip on the head and go away with my support staff somewhere in Europe for one week this giving me the confidence to travel to India in the future? That would please my care team.
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I think a lot of us can worry like that. I certainly do,though mine is whether I’m just socially dysfunctional or really ill.
I try to hold on to the reasoning that pdocs don’t put you on a depot like doling out smarties to children but it’s not easy.
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I lived in a group home from 1990-95. Turns out those were my most productive years I’ve had since i got diagnosed in 1980.
When I got in there, I had just gotten clean and sober from a nasty crack addiction, I had a part time job, and about a month after I moved in I started college. Except for one month when my job ended and a new one started I was employed the entire time. Eventually I was going to 5 or 6 AA, CA, or NA meetings a week.
The owners of tne group home did not allow any residents to own or drive a car so I took the bus for an hour 4 or 5 days a week to my job. I was walking or catching the bus to my 12-step meetings. I Made a friend at the home who started coming to meetings with me and we hung out at the home and also went all over the place like movies, record stores, AA functions, clubs, etc.
Anyways that’s my story of my time there. But…I remember one older guy spent most of his time out in the yard talking to himself and didn’t really do much else. Most of the other residents, didn’t work and nobody else went to school besides me. Those guys drank and and did drugs and stole and hung out with other nefarious people.
I was clean and didn’t get in trouble like them with the owner. As you can imagine no one liked me there except my one friend. I collected both SSDI and SSI the entire time I was there. I’ve lived in other group homes and the residents had various degrees of functioning. It is not unusual to see people going to school or a job while in a group home.
Functioning is not a black & white thing, it’s more on a spectrum. Some people can go to school but can’t work. Other people may be able to work but can’t handle school. Some people may be able to work 30 or 40 hours a week while others can’t handle more than 15 or 2 hours a week.
I’m not sure if this answers your question but this is my experience.
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The supported living I’m in is for recovering addicts and homeless. I do know they have more permanent accommodation but I want to get my son back so couldn’t stay in them. I think they are more for single people with no young children. From what my friends have said the group homes are varied. I think it depends on whether they specialise or not.
Here in the U.K. we have two systems. We have Residential Care homes and Supported Living. Effectively they are both group homes with paid staff. Residential Care homes are reserved for people with severe/profound learning disabilities (mental handicaps) who require lots of support with daily living such as personal care. Supported Living such as my complex are for people with mild/moderate learning disabilities (mental handicaps) Autism or both and mental health problems. In Residential homes all the funding is paid by social services and the persons get an allowance of around £25.00 a week for personal stuff but all their food and heating is provided where in Supported Living the person can claim a range of disability benefits and get to keep that money, they are supported to manage money and pay bills. The care staff are paid by social services but the house rent is paid by benefits.
It is very difficult to be allocated a supported living placements solely if you mental health issues unless its a homeless hostel or forensic place, you have to meet a very high fresh-hold to get funding from social services, everything goes to something called ‘Panel’ If your being supported by mental health services they don’t have a very big budget or resources unlike the learning disability team and many people with very severe SZA/SZ are left with little or no support because time and support is limited so they are left alone, they promote wellbeing and independence. We hardly have any people with mental health issues in any of the supported living house in my town only people learning disability and a mental health problems.
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Why do some group homes not allow the residents to drive a car?
Do you know the reasoning behind that?
No I don’t. A safety issue maybe?
It is sad that low functioning szs are cut off like that… 
I would ask would many low functioning sz be living independently or with family/in group homes? The truth is in the UK we have a system very much geared to those with severe mental illness who have acute episodes. Meanwhile you can be non acute , but overall functioning worse than acutely ill people most of the time, and you’ll be placed at the back of the queue for support. Getting that support is very much dependant on family coming in to bat for you.
I am not sz and don’t consider myself low functioning overall (except perhaps socially). I am however chronically severely mentally ill and was described a few years back, when having to apply for a disability benefit, as having ‘limited ability to function independently in the community’.
At the time I was getting just over a year of what would be time limited limited help from a rehab and recovery team. The only help above going for my depot I had had in years. When that stopped it was back to just fortnightly depot and seeing the nurse practitioner every 6 months.
The situation was bad enough for my stepdaughter to press for me to come and live near her when an opportunity arose(block of flats was going to be knocked down). She had done what she could living over 3 hours away but it was a case of temporarily papering over the cracks each time she visited. I had family/step family nearer but for various reasons they were unable or unwilling to help.
I’m now getting more social support but only because my stepdaughter has pushed for it in on my behalf. She also does a lot for me.
However what happens if you are in a situation like mine and you don’t have any family, or at least any able and willing, to fight your cause? There must be thousands of chronically ,severely mentally ill people in that position. It is more likely to be those whose acute symptoms have all but burnt out with remaining negative symptoms that are likely to be put on auto pilot in terms of care and support.
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I think a lot of people fall through the cracks and end up in homeless accommodation or on the streets. I’ve met countless people who have severe mental health problems in my time being homeless. Because a lot of hostels are 24 hour staffed the council places us in them. I’ve even met a guy with fetal alcohol syndrome who was just left to the homeless charity sector. With austerity cuts continuing I don’t see a change anytime soon sadly.
How does supportive housing work?
When I felt I was not coping I thought about these things and different types of support.
My family might take care of me in some way needed it be but I don’t think they would want to live with me.
Just visit and hang out sometimes.
I am grateful I felt better and do not need such living assistance.
My man and I take care of each other and his darling dogzzz and my sacred neigh .
When I feel I’m not coping I try to get through it.
I might ask my dr for anxiety pills that can be taken when needed overwhelmed etc
Maybe they relax muscles I think.
Any one know of such tablets?
I seem more worked up than I was on olanzapine.
With Supportive Housing they provide you with housing at a lower cost and you have access to case management services.
I tried it for a while but didn’t blend in with my antisocial roommates so I am back living with my parents.
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When I lived in supported housing I was much more low functioning than I was now.
@anon35166066 even though I was in the state I was and in supported housing I had to go to court to get my disability. I didn’t even get an assessment. Just a straight denial on application and appeal form.
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That sucks man. I wish we didn’t have to jump through so many hoops to get the help we need.
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