Time Designers Ltd is a small company co-owned by Rachel Mason, a family carer with two sons with Autism and Learning disabilities. This we feel reassures you that any product that Time Designers offer in the area of Social Care, Education and Health will always be practical, meaningful and designed to make a real difference in someone's life.
Time Designers pride themselves in providing resources that are primarily for Young people, adults and their families /circles of support and will endeavour to make every product accessible and affordable.
We welcome the use of the products we design by Local Authorities and other organisations or services, but will ensure that those licensing the products from Time Designers Ltd. use them to gain better outcomes for the people they serve.
We can offer training in person-centred support planning and community brokerage as well as tips and guidance in getting the best out of the many features within the 24/7 Grid tool.
At transition both my sons went through a long referral process and assessments. After months of waiting, these ‘processes' did nothing to help me and my sons to think about all the different practical ways they could live a good life in their local community.
I knew my sons were disabled and would need support in certain aspects of their life. I didn't need a RAS assessment, which would give my sons a theoretical sum to provide support for an abstract set of assessed needs, to tell me that.
This RAS approach (eligibility and allocation of funding by level of disability) seemed to only accentuate what my sons couldn't do and could easily cause a long term dependency on services as many will be afraid to aspire to improve their lives in fear of having their funding cut. It took me 18 months to build a support tool that I think will encourage people to build on their achievements and proactively using the services they are eligible for at one point in their life, to aspire for a better future.
Using the 24/ 7 Grid my son's circle of support set out to find out how he wanted to live and mapped it out. We were determined to build on what he had learned at school. We knew what he could do himself, where assistive technology would best enable him and where local volunteer schemes and natural support links he had established over the years could be utilised. The areas of support which remained are what we costed up and approached services for.
The 247 grid also helped me to show the social worker that the In-house specialist residential placement offered to him was over 20 miles from his community and would not achieve his goals.
We knew we could do SO much more with that money!
My sons both requested Personal budgets that came in £thousands under that which the RAS system would have allocated them. We sat down with the social worker to agree a care and support plan that mirrored the life described in the 24/7 Grid we had designed and it was PASSED “
The 247grid turns assessment on its head. At last there is a practical way to look at a person's life and build in the support they need around them, to live it!