Service overview · For commissioning teams

The part you actually need to check.

The Ember Project provides supported accommodation for young people aged 16–25, anywhere in Wales. It's founder-led and run by an experienced staff team. We're new, so we'll tell you what we can evidence rather than what we can't.

01 · Referral criteria

Who we take, and who we don't

The fastest way to waste your time is a provider who is vague about this. Here it is plainly, so you can rule us in or out before you write anything up.

Who we take

  • Young people aged 16–25, referred by any UK local authority and placed in Wales
  • Care leavers, homeless 16 and 17 year olds, unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people, and young people stepping down from residential care
  • Emergency and planned moves — shared houses of 2–4 and solo provision
  • Higher-need referrals where the support hours are funded to match. We'll tell you the number we think it takes rather than fudge it to win the placement

Who we don't

  • Anyone whose assessed needs call for registered care. That's a different service and we won't pretend otherwise
  • A referral that's a bad match for the current residents of a house. We check the mix before we say yes
  • Placements where the location must be kept from a specific person and our available houses can't guarantee it

A no always comes with the reason, and where we know one, a better-placed provider.

02 · The service

What a young person gets

Accommodation

Shared houses of 2–4 young people, and solo provision where the plan calls for it. Own lockable room, own key. Houses are ordinary streets, ordinary houses — nothing that marks anyone out. Exact addresses are shared on referral only.

Support

One named key worker, weekly structured sessions, staff on site daily and on-call 24/7. Support hours are set per placement and written into the agreement, not averaged across a house.

Independence work

Cooking, money, benefits claims, tenancy readiness, registering with a GP, getting to college or work. Documented against a skills framework you can inspect, updated every review.

Move-on

Move-on planning starts at the first review, not the last. We work with housing options teams early so the end of a placement is a plan, not a cliff edge.

How young people experience it

Every young person gets a welcome pack before they arrive, a named worker's profile card so the first face isn't a stranger's, and a wallet card with out-of-hours numbers including Meic and Childline. Everything we write about them, they can read. House rules are agreed with residents and reviewed with them — staff are bound by the same rules. See exactly what happens on move-in day →

03 · Reporting

How we report

  • Placement report every 4 weeks — exceptions flagged, no padding
  • Incidents notified to the allocated worker within 24 hours, in writing
  • Everything we record about a young person is written so they can read it — and they can
  • The founder attends every review meeting for the first 12 weeks of a placement

04 · Safeguarding and quality

Open to scrutiny, before and during

  • Staffing. Enhanced DBS with barred-list check for every member of staff before first shift, renewed on the update service. Safer recruitment: references verified by phone, gaps in employment history accounted for in writing.
  • Incidents. Notified to the allocated worker within 24 hours in writing, sooner by phone where urgent. Our threshold for telling you is low — you decide what matters, not us.
  • Records. Written to be read by the young person they're about. This is our single biggest quality control: staff write differently when the subject will read it.
  • Missing episodes. Reported to the police and, out of hours, the emergency duty team, with return interviews offered independently of us.
  • Complaints. Young people get the CIW number in their welcome pack, on the first page a commissioner would never see — because it's not for you, it's for them.
  • Insurance and policies. Public liability £10m, employers' liability £10m. Full policy set available on request before referral.

Supported accommodation for 16+ in Wales does not currently require CIW registration. We treat that as a reason for more scrutiny of providers, not less — everything above is open to audit at any point in a placement, not just at commissioning.

05 · Matching and rates

What we don't do

Matching, honestly

We consider the current residents of a house before saying yes. If the mix is wrong, we say no — a fast placement that breaks down in three weeks costs everyone more than a slower right one.

Rates

Weekly rate per placement, set against assessed support hours, itemised in the agreement. No referral fee, no charge if a referral doesn't proceed, no uplift without your sign-off.

Where we say no

We don't take referrals we can't support well — if the match is wrong we'll say so within the 4 hours and, where we can, point you somewhere better. We don't take needs requiring registered care, referrals that break a house mix, or location-confidentiality we can't guarantee. We don't move young people between houses to suit occupancy. We don't charge for referrals that don't proceed.

Referrals and enquiries

07849 429020 referrals@the-emberproject.co.uk

Answered by a founder. Partial information is fine to start.