ASCENT FAMILY HOMES
Aspen House is the first of our residential homes will offer boys a place to heal from past traumas with support. Ascent Family Homes offer children’s residential placements, and builds on the services offered by Ascent Fostering Agency to offer a therapeutic space for young people. We believe that long term most children are best placed in family environments and Aspen will prepare children to live with families.
OUR SERVICE
Aspen House is a step up-step down service for boys between 11-15 years, who are looked after and the network believe they can live long term in foster care or with their birth families. We work with boys to help resolve their attachment issues and early life trauma. We are committed to offering therapeutic support and the use of PACE in how we engage. We build strong relationships and partner with young people to improve and change their lives.
We are delighted that Aspen House received an “outstanding” rating from Ofsted in August 2023.
OUR TEAM IS HIGHLY SKILLED AT SUPPORTING YOUNG PEOPLE WITH COMPLEX NEEDS AND UNDERSTANDS THE UNIQUE RISK FOR ADOLESCENTS
“One child’s parent stated that they have seen a significant improvement in their child’s behaviour, confidence, and understanding of boundaries since moving into the home”
– Ofsted inspection 2023
Aspen House is a warm and friendly family environment located in a residential suburb of South London that has excellent links to the entire city. Our team is highly skilled at supporting young people with complex needs and understands the unique risk for adolescent be it; substance misuse, county lines, gangs or managing trauma. We work therapeutically with young people to help them to make sense of their early life experience, and support them to make the best choices and become the leaders of their own lives.
OUR THERAPEUTIC APPROACH
Aspen House has a therapeutic approach that supports children and young people who require residential care. The organisation works with children and young people who have a range of complex care needs and offers bespoke care and support packages within a residential setting.
WE ARE COMMITTED TO BUILDING STRONG RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUNG PEOPLE
“Children’s individual preferences, wishes, feelings, risks, and needs are thoroughly known and understood by the staff team”
– Ofsted inspection 2023
Our approach to support is called ‘Intentional Parenting.’ This approach encapsulates all of our interventions and methods to support and engage with young people with high care needs. Our approach ensures the whole professional team at Aspen has a therapeutic understanding.
We are committed to building strong relationships with young people and accepting where they are at when coming to an Ascent Family Home. Our approach is to see the world from a young persons perspective which informs how we engage and go on the journey with them.
Our ethos is to meet children at their ‘map of the world’. Our residential workers intentionally parent children on their journey to recovery through intensive support and mentoring. We aim to build relationships with young people that are safe and supportive.
We also engage young people in their personal development through our partner organisation Reaching Higher. They offer young people access to creative arts, sports, music and life skills.
INTENTIONAL PARENTING
Intentional Parenting is our model of how we support our children. We believe the onus is on adults to respond to the unmet needs of children. We recognise it is challenging to care for children who have experienced trauma, so the network needs to be trained, attuned and have the ability to see past the child’s presenting behaviours.
We believe that residential care workers and professionals need to act intentionally in their interactions with vulnerable children by providing nurture, affirmation, love, safety, structure, and challenge. These interactions are attempts to meet the deficits of their previous parental experiences but most importantly give them strategies to cope and move on positively with their lives.
We believe that no one theory meets the needs of human beings, so we have drawn upon and work within existing theoretical approaches such as attachment, systemic theory, and psychodynamic approaches. We recognise the need to remain open and curious about methods or ideas in aiding us to respond to the individual needs of each child.
RESIDENTIAL CARE WORKERS AND PROFESSIONALS NEED TO ACT INTENTIONALLY IN OUR INTERACTIONS WITH VULNERABLE CHILDREN BY PROVIDING NURTURE, AFFIRMATION, LOVE, SAFETY, STRUCTURE, AND CHALLENGE
“Children say that they feel safe living in the home. One child said that it feels ‘natural’ living here”
– Ofsted inspection 2023
ASPEN HOUSE
Aspen House is a substantial five bedroomed home with a garden and outdoor space. It has a therapy/sensory room and creative suite that will include music and computing. The home has ample space for learning.
We are aware that many of our children struggle because they do not have basic literacy and numeracy skills to function well in mainstream education. Therefore, the young people will receive additional English and Maths tuition to support them in their learning. We believe young people will benefit massively with this additional support.
VALUE FOR COMMISIONERS
We are committed to providing value to commissioners as we seek to move children back into family placements after they have received the help and support they need in residential care. This means that local authorities will reduce costs as children move into foster care or back to birth families.
