Enter & View: Connelly House

Report - 12 September 2016

We ran a series of Enter and Views into community services. Connelly House, run by Cyrenians, offers 24-hour supported accommodation for those with complex mental health needs.

Summary

Connelly House is a 24-hour supported accommodation service run by Cyrenians, a registered charity and company. The House initially opened as a forensic mental health service in 2013. It has since developed with the needs of the borough and now accepts referrals of anyone with complex mental health needs. The aims of the Enter and View visits were to: Listen to how mental health service users perceive the quality of the support, activities and accommodation they receive at Connelly House, Explore service users’ levels of awareness and engagement with other mental health community services in the area. On the day, we spoke to eight service users. We asked about the quality of the support and activities at Connelly House, their views on the staff and their level of engagement with other activities and services in the area. Although participation is voluntary, no service users who were present declined to speak to us.

Key findings

External environment - On the day we visited, the outside of the premises was clean and tidy. There was a slate plaque on number 132 with the house name.
Internal environment - The front door of number 132 opens into a small hallway with a large, communal living room on the right. The living room is spacious and comfortable, with sufficient seating, a dining table and a kitchenette. It was clean and tidy. Service users appeared to feel comfortable and at home in the communal spaces
Service users at Connelly House were keen to highlight the high quality, physical interior of the house and their location; they appeared to take great pride in their individual flats.

Overall, service users indicated that the support from staff at Connelly House was consistent and of high quality. Recommendation 1, Additional training for key staff members around medication would be beneficial to ensure staff are confident in their knowledge and handling of different psychotropic medications. Recommendation 2, Increased signposting may help service users identify viable areas of support. For instance, more active signposting towards Lambeth’s Citizens Advice Bureau or Every Pound Counts. Overall, feedback from service users and staff at Connelly House was overwhelmingly positive. Our impression on the day was of a well-run service which supports its service users holistically. We were very impressed with the clear care and effort put in by staff members as well as the sense of community that the service has been able to foster amongst service users and staff.