Who we are:
Turning Point is the UK’s leading social care organisation. We provide services for people with complex needs, including those affected by drug and alcohol misuse, mental health problems and those with a learning disability. We provide over 250 services and worked with over 100,000 people last year. Our services include but are not limited to:
- Supported housing for people with mental health problems, with a learning disability and with both
- Drug and alcohol services including advice and education for young people, rehabilitation services, counselling, outreach work, and support services for friends and family members
- Outreach services for people with mental health problems including emergency helplines, support for carers and support for people living independently in their own homes
- Education and employment programmes such as the Government-backed Progress2work scheme
- Support services across these areas in prisons and working with probation and youth offender services
As a social care organisation Turning Point works with whole people not single problems. Social care means going beyond people’s most obvious physical or personal problems and drawing together whatever further support is needed in their lives – including housing, education and employment.
Social care also means making sure services reflect the needs of the communities they work in. Providing suitable services according to the age, culture and other characteristics of the people they are targeting. Turning Point has national programmes to apply these principles across our services, including Access, our equality and diversity programme and a national strategy for meeting the needs of young people.
About the people we work with
Imagine trying to get your car fixed after a crash and finding that you have to take it to a different garage to fix each part. One to change the brake cables, another to fix the windscreen, a third to change the tyres and so on. Even worse, each garage is in a different area and none of them shares information so you have to repeatedly explain the problem and fill out separate forms at each visit. It sounds bizarre but people with serious health or personal problems frequently suffer similar experiences when trying to get help.
People whose needs do not fit neatly into a certain category can be bounced around the system having to explain their problems again and again. Services are often designed to focus on just one specific issue rather than looking at someone’s whole needs.
It may be quite straightforward for someone with depression to get medication from their doctor for example. But that person might have also just lost their job, be facing eviction because of rent arrears and have started drinking heavily. Faced with all of these problems it should not be surprising if they can’t fight their way through the system to get help.
People are complex with equally complex problems. Half of the people getting help for alcohol problems with Turning Point also said they had a mental health problem. And 36 per cent of our residents with a learning disability also have a mental health problem.