Stage 3 – Making the move

Chapters

Introduction

You have now reached the final chapter of Stage 3 – Making the move.

If you have completed all three previous chapters, you should now have a clearer idea about the systems and structures that are going to support your new living situation, including:

your finance systems and budgets

your systems and strategies for managing your household

a plan for managing your paid supports

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This final chapter will focus on four key areas:

Reviewing your plans and workings from the Stage 3 worksheets

Completing any unfinished chapters and worksheets from Stages 1, 2 and 3 (excluding any that are not relevant to your situation)

Consolidating your decisions and ideas

Building your action plan to help translate these ideas into a reality.

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Note: The pace that you work through this journey is unique to you and your situation. This might mean that you are ready to move into your new living situation right now, or it might mean that you are going to spend the next two years preparing for this future.

Whatever your situation, by the end of this chapter you will have a clear framework to use to guide your next steps.

Reviewing Stage 3

To ensure you are confident about your decisions, we recommend that you go back through the worksheets from Stage 3 with your support team to make sure you have captured all the things that are most important to you. This includes your values, your needs and your priorities.

If a lot of time has passed while you have worked through the content of Moving Out, make sure that the early worksheets have been updated with any changes, so they are a true reflection of where you are at right now.

If there is anything you feel unsure about, it is OK to go back and review the chapters again. Re-do the worksheets if you need to, until you feel confident to take your decisions through to your action plan.

This resource is designed as a guide, but you can adapt the process in whatever way works best for you. There is no expectation that you need to progress in any particular order or at any particular speed.

Being open to change

It is common for people to think they have a plan in place and then feel disrupted when situations or goals shift. Keeping your plan flexible enough that it can change with you as you grow and learn will increase your chances of achieving success.

What to do if you need more help

If you have reached the end of this stage and are feeling really overwhelmed or lost, it might be worth reviewing who you have in your support team and whether you need to pull in any additional help. This might be a sign that you need to invite some more members of your natural supports in to help you with this journey.

Alternatively, you might need to look at a specific disability support service that can help you. Flying Kites offers a service that can help make goals like this happen; we can facilitate meetings with your support team, help you create your action plan, or give you advice about what to do next. These services can be paid for from your Individualised Funding, if you have it. More information is available from the Flying Kites website.

Where to start

Decide: are you ready to action your ideas?

Whether you are ready to make your move into your new living situation is a decision you will need to come to with your support team. There are no set criteria for ‘being ready’ – instead this will depend on when you and your support team feel confident to take the necessary action to make your plans a reality.

Before you make this decision, go back through your worksheets for Stages 1, 2 and 3 and consolidate your decisions into one clear plan. This will help make it easier to see what your action plan needs to focus on.

Next steps

Read through the example scenarios below.

In collaboration with your support team, review your ideas, decisions and priorities from your worksheets for Stages 1, 2 and 3. Decide if you need to go back and review any sections before moving forward with your plans.

Use the worksheet below to build a plan for your next steps.

Scenarios

Grace and Hannah

Grace and Hannah have decided that they want to move into a flat together. They have worked through the budget and made a plan, but have realised it might be more complicated to manage a household than they expected. Both of their families have identified some skills that they will need to work on and some risks that will need to be managed before it will be safe for them to live away from their parents.

Together, they have set a timeframe of 18 months for their move. Grace and Hannah each have an action plan to help them build their skills and manage the risks once the move happens. In the meantime, their parents are having conversations about government supports, finding affordable housing and figuring out how the household budget is going to work.

Jordan

Jordan is loving living alone in his new place. He had to move house urgently because of his family situation and ended up in emergency housing for a short time. It has been an unsettled few months, during which he needed a lot of extra paid supports, but now that he is settled in a long-term rental he is ready to start working on a longer-term plan.

Jordan had to skip a few parts of the planning process when he was moving, so he and his support team are going to go back through some of the planning stages and make sure that he has everything set up properly.

Leilani

Leilani has embraced her new living situation. Her support team have been helpful when setting up relationships within her flat and getting systems in place to support her. Since the move, Leilani’s paid supports have worked intensively with her around her weekly budget and, together, they have had to adjust the financial system a few times as they have discovered that Leilani finds this particularly difficult.

Leilani and her team have developed a new action plan for the next six months, so that they are clear on who is helping Leilani with each goal and being proactive about reviewing what is and isn’t working for her.