Services for Familes and Circles of Support

Individuals with intellectual disability, mental illness and other complex needs often have families, friends and circles of support who play important roles in their journey through life- offering everything from valued lifelong friendships and family ties, to 24/7 daily care and the oversight of all professional services involved in the person’s life.

The individual, and their circles of supports, can often benefit from professional services at various points in the individual’s life. G.C.C. offers a wide range of these services. Each situation is unique, and G.C.C. works in close collaboration with the people involved so that the services provided are customized to their unique needs.

Life Planning

The overall goal for families and circles of support is to assist the individual to flourish- to have as much independence as possible, a place to call home, a life of positive emotions and experiences, positive relationships, meaningful and valued roles and activities, a sense of achievement, and security in the present and future.

Often it is the lack of these things in life that lead to challenges and crises, or at least make them that much more difficult to resolve. For this reason, these quality of life issues are a key focus for all of G.C.C. services.

G.C.C. provides guidance to families designing and implementing a healthy life plan for the individual. The focus can be wide ranging- everything from creating a network of friends, to finding a job or developing a living environment that the individual can call home.

Clinical Assessment and Planning

Often families and circles of support struggle to assist the individual to overcome challenges and crises. G.C.C. provides clinical assessment and treatment planning that helps determine what is causing a challenge or crisis, and how to respond to it.

Supporting an individual with complex needs often means having to absorb and understand a large amount of very technical information about medical, psychiatric and psychological diagnoses, treatment recommendations, and navigating service systems and agencies. G.C.C. provides plain language advice and explanations to assist families and others to make informed decisions about their loved one’s care and treatment.

G.C.C. assures that the insight and involvement of other professionals and specialists are integrated into the treatment plan.

Case Management

Often the process of accessing, managing and maintaining the supports and resources surrounding the individual represents a huge challenge in itself.

G.C.C. provides advice on the services and resources that are available, and guidance on how to access them. G.C.C. assists with organizing, coordinating and managing the roles of various specialists in the clinical assessment and treatment planning process- assuring that all available community supports and services are accessed, coordinated, and fully engaged.

Training and Knowledge Exchange

G.C.C. offers training and insight into all aspects of the support and care of an individual. The focus of the training, and how and where it is offered, is determined in consultation with the people requiring the training.

Training can be offered through:

• Formal training sessions offered to groups of people with similar learning needs.
• A less formal exchange of knowledge with individuals and their supports- in their own environment and through discussions that assure that they absorb the information provided.

Training responds to the caregiver’s needs by assuring that they clearly understand what is being taught, and that they leave knowing how to implement what they learned in their go-forward actions.