PSS Shared Lives Merseyside

PSS Shared Lives carers are trained in all kinds of things from safeguarding and providing personal care to administering medication.  

We’ve got a dedicated learning and development team who support them to be the very best they can be, and each carer must do essential courses regularly to make sure they are up-to-date.

Yes! In England, PSS Shared Lives is regulated by the Care Quality Commission (CQC). In Wales, we‘re regulated by the Care Inspectorate Wales (CIW). We’re inspected regularly.

You can read our CQC reports by visiting the CQC website: www.cqc.org.uk. You can read our CIW reports by visiting the CIW website: www.careinspectorate.wales.

Yes, you can choose your PSS Shared Lives carer. 

We'll take you through a match-making process, looking at what you like, what you don’t like, what you enjoy doing, what you need from your PSS Shared Lives carer and, if you’re going to be staying with your Shared Lives carer, what type of house you’d like to live in. For example, if you use a wheelchair, you might prefer to live in a bungalow, or if you’re a new mum or dad, maybe you’ll want to live somewhere that can fit a baby, too.

We’ll match you up with a carer who’s a good fit for you and who lives somewhere that suits your needs.

There are a few ways you can get a PSS Shared Lives carer.

• Have a chat to your social worker and ask them about PSS Shared Lives
• Get in touch with one of our team (check the list of our locations on this page) and see if we can help
• If we're not in your area right now, check to see if there are any other providers in your area

Our friendly team will be with you from the beginning.

First, we'll get to know all about you.  We'll find out what you like, what you don't like and what you want to do in your life. You, your social worker, your family or your carer will tell us all about the support you'd like to have, and what you're looking for in a carer. We'll get to know about any special support you'll need, and what type of house you want to live in.

Once we know all about you, we'll show you which Shared Lives carers in your area would be a good fit for you. We can use our matching website, Matching Lives, to show you who they are, and even show you round their houses. 

If you see someone you think looks like a good fit for you, we can arrange a meet-up, so you can say hello, and see whether or not they're the right carer for you. We can even arrange for you to stay overnight to see what you think.

When we've found you a carer that you really like and you start your Shared Lives journey, we'll keep an eye on things. We'll come and visit you and your carer regularly to check things are all ok, and that you're safe, happy and well.

If there are any problems while you're with your carers, we'll help.

Back in 1978, Shared Lives was invented by a brilliant woman called Sue Newton, who worked at PSS (no surprise there). Lots of older people were then living in ‘institutions’, where they lived in constant care. The government was closing lots of them down and many people who were living in them had nowhere to go.

That’s when we stepped up.

PSS invented a service where these older people would go and live with a volunteer who wanted to help them. It worked, and over time the service began to evolve, changing and developing to become what it is today – the fastest growing form of social care in the UK.

These days, the service isn’t run by volunteers, support’s provided by our amazing Shared Lives carers. And it isn’t just for older people, it’s for anyone who needs it.

PSS Shared Lives is for anyone who needs some support. We support people with lots of different types of needs, and everyone's unique. We support you in the way you want to be supported. We support everyone from new mums and dads who need a little help adjusting to family life, people recovering from addictions and people leaving foster care, and people with learning disabilities, though to people who have mental health conditions, people with brain injuries, people with physical disabilities, autistic people, and people leaving a domestic abuse situation.