Assessment Process
Zebra Care Homes undertakes a responsible approach to the assessment process - we believe it is crucial to the success of any placement.

Zebra Care Homes will only offer placements to:

 - a person who will gain maximum benefit from our service
 - a person who is compatible with our other residents
 - a person who we have the correct services to best meet their needs

There are three stages to our assessment process:

Stage 1 - Contact
Initial contact may be made by telephone, fax, e-mail or in writing. At this stage we will ask for as much information about the prospective service user as is possible. We will ask you to complete a Referral From. This can include: community care assessment; health action plan;       person centered plan or clinical report and we will follow this with a     telephone call in order to confirm whether we have the correct services and whether the placement should be pursued to the next stage.

Stage 2 - Visit
In general, we invite prospective service users, family, carers and care managers to visit a home at a time to suit our current service users. This provides an opportunity to meet with the home manager, the staff team and the service users. . If prospective service users, family and care managers feel comfortable with the home, we then proceed to Stage 3.

Stage 3 - Assessment
We will visit the prospective service user in their current surroundings in order to undertake a comprehensive assessment. This can involve meetings with, for example, current day services, parents, clinicians, existing care home, other carers, friends and advocates. Above all, we aim to meet the prospective service user in their current environment in an attempt to gain a “snap shot”.

Each assessment is undertaken by an experienced professional who is therefore capable of interpreting information from a clinical              perspective as well seeking information about the rounded person.

What are the aims of the assessment?
- To determine the level of need that a prospective service user has across an array of activities of daily living skills and their general      functional abilities.

- To gain an understanding of the person's character and personality in order to make a judgment as to how they will integrate with other service users and the type of people they would prefer to live with.

- To gain an understanding of their preferred communication method and to determine how this can be built into their individualised plans.

- To assess the person's behavioral assets and deficits in order to gauge their current functioning and how these provide benefits and/or frustrations to the person's daily life.

- To gain an understanding of any complex needs the person may have and how such additional issues impact upon themselves and upon the people around them.

- To determine an initial fee for a placement within Zebra Care Homes

Stage 4 - Offer
We will construct a comprehensive report regarding the prospective service user, which is based upon the information received. The report will define the service specification, the assessed support          requirements, whether Zebra Care Homes are able to offer a service and, if appropriate, the fee level.

This report is usually sent to the care manager within four working days following the assessment.