Six Months On

Six months ago one of our service users wrote a post about his time with Arch Care Services. In this blog post we’ll check back in and see how much has changed. 

It’s been over six months of moving out of the Arch Care supported accommodation and moving into my own flat; how’s it gone?

Moving in was a little insane; from not knowing when I would get a flat from the Homechoice system I had finally moved into my new place within two weeks. It was a fast paced move with the viewing, handing over the keys, and painting and decorating the place (with the help of my family) all done lightning quick. My head was spinning when I had the flat to myself. It was so dislocating moving from housemates and staff to no-one. I don’t know how other people cope with this but I definitely found it a very stressful process.

Then the second month in I felt very depressed. I was meant to be getting support from the Arch Care staff but because it had to go through a time-delaying system I had to wait until later. And this is where it could have gone all so very wrong for me. I had no routines set up other than my volunteer work at the Hospital facilitating creative writing and I felt floating in the air, blown by the breeze and struggled to see a way through.

Fortunately the month after I did get support from Arch Care and other opportunities have been afforded me. These opportunities have come at the right time. One is getting a studio to write in on the High Street, where I have finished writing a play, and being part of the artistic community in the town. Another is going to free drama workshops and now being the dramaturge to a theatre piece. And I found out today that I might be going to Plymouth to speak at an event about social prescribing. And two micropubs have opened up in town, which is very important.

In my darkest moment of this year I confided in a friend online and he said to me a very sensible thing, which is that living on your own is one of the hardest challenges that anyone can undertake, so it’s all very well to point at the social context and political context for your problems but you need to cultivate your own garden in the hope that it spreads out everywhere else. It was very reasonable and did save me from a lot more anguish, so I thank him.

I also thank Arch Care who have really helped me to build a solid routine for myself and have made it so that the transition from supported accommodation to independent living was a relatively easy one. And such a success that has been that I now finally feel ready to relieve them of their services and live fully independently and filling more of my life with that which I love.

The flat itself is perfect for me, perfect location and even an old friend is about to move round the corner near our local where we can chew the cud over a pint. Now I have a decent hit rate of great days and all of this has been achieved in a relatively short amount of time. Give me another six months and it’ll be even better.