About Southdown

Southdown is a not-for-profit specialist provider of support and housing services to vulnerable people across Sussex. Our vision is for 'everyone, no matter what their life experience, background or challenges, will have the opportunity to lead their life to the full'. Fundamental to all the services we deliver is the ethos of working alongside clients to coach and empower them to develop the skills and confidence to take action and responsibility to increase their independence - 'Making Life Work'.

We are a robust and successful local organisation with a turnover of £20.5million. We support over 7,150 people and their families across Sussex each year and employ 750 staff. We provide a range of services including: housing related support, supported employment, supported accommodation, care and community services.

Key elements that contribute to our success include:

• A support model that fully embraces our Core Values and Vision and delivers tailored packages of support for individuals that are flexible and outcome focused
• Service Users being integrated into the review and ongoing development of service delivery
• Working as partners with commissioners and stakeholders
• Having an excellent reputation for staff training and development
• Strong leadership by managers with a long personal track record of service delivery at a local level
• Staff access to local support infrastructures to enable effective management of large and/or dispersed teams
• The ability as a medium size organisation to respond quickly to change
• Having capacity and resources to plan and deliver new projects.

To read our Annual Review 2010 please click here

Terminology

Southdown provides services to over 5,300 people across Sussex. Generally we use the name 'Service User' to describe the large group of people who access our support.

However, we have many types of services and sometimes need to use different terms to identify people who are part of particular groups. For example:

- If Southdown is your landlord you may be a tenant, resident or licensee.

- If you take part in any Involvement activities you may be a Southdowner, a Quality Consultant or a Volunteer.

- If you access Floating Support or Supported Employment services you may be a client.

Though we will always use the term 'Service User' when we are talking about issues which affect everyone, we may use different names if we are talking about an issue affecting a specific group.