Beneficiaries are able to approach the charity directly for help or via their Care Manager. Acre Housing currently owns 39 properties providing homes for 116 tenants, all of whom are over the age of 18 and have a wide range of conditions and/or learning disabilities such as autism, cerebral palsy and Downs syndrome.
Being able to live in your own home is of great benefit to the people we support as historically, they have been a group of people for whom housing has been difficult to obtain. Acre Housing gives a new lease of life to its tenants, providing them with specially adapted accommodation to suit their individual needs and requirements.
The provision of housing is also of great importance to the families of those we support as they will have been the main carers for many, many years and this enables them to feel reassured over the long-term future of their loved ones.
Having a home guarantees a place in the community and is part of how people are accepted as equal citizens. People with learning disabilities are one of the most socially excluded groups in our society and this is primarily a result of an historical segregation of services that unintentionally deny people their own home, choice and control and a decent income; factors which ultimately deny citizenship and social inclusion.
Acre Housing provides tangible benefits to local communities which gain from the overall experience of getting to know people with learning disabilities and recognising that they have the same rights of access to the local community as every other member of society. If people with learning disabilities and other associated conditions were not supported to live in ordinary houses they would be at risk of being forced into more institutionalised forms of care.
Lady J Thomson, J Pozzoni, A Bryan and M Stoddart