Friends Together is a family-run company that provides support for people with learning difficulties, people on the autistic spectrum and people with difficult epilepsy. We do this through providing activities to small groups and through a support staff service which is provided to individuals.

Friends Together is not like other service providers. Our care is customer centred and customers are involved in the recruitment of new staff as well as in planning activities for group and their own personal support.

We’re not a charity: we’re a business providing services that we believe add value to people’s lives. We respect the people who use our services enough to call them customers. We respect their autonomy and we’re grateful they chose us; our aim is to live up to their confidence with our commitment.

Our customers deserve the best service for their money and we aim to provide a service that keeps customers returning.  Our customers form a personal relationship with us as individuals, built on mutual trust and respect, and one of our key aims is to keep and grow that aspect of what we do along with the rest of the business.

When we meet with our customers and their families, we keep hearing the same things: people want something better for themselves and their loved ones than ‘big faceless companies.’  That’s what we exist to provide. And we start with a level of responsibility and autonomy that means when you call or contact Friends Together, you’ll talk to one of us, directly – and we can get started on fixing your problem straight away.

Friends Together operates a bespoke support staff service, that’s built around what the customer wants.

Our highly individual, person-centred approach is the key to everything we’ve achieved, and it comes from the experience of our staff and the attitude we’ve built the company around.

At Friends Together, our support staff are Personal Assistants (PAs), and rather than a constantly-changing team, customers have a one-to-one relationship with a single PA whom they choose. We believe this enables our PAs to provide the level of service and individual care our customers deserve.

We aim to provide a ‘wraparound’ service for our customers: we want to be able to help customers with every step of core planning, budget planning, home help and access to peripheral services and agencies.

Friends Together PAs help our customers plan holidays and shop for clothes, organize their financial affairs and discover new hobbies and interests – we provide the support the customer wants to develop and grow in the direction they want. And the results of this kind of support can be a whole new level of confidence and engagement with the world.

After a PA is teamed with a customer, the two go on to develop ways of working together that produce the best outcomes for the customer; customers are involved in planning their own services.

Friends Together offers activities our students choose, based on what they want.

Students propose new activities or steer existing ones in new directions. A good example of the Friends Together style is our bowling team. At the suggestion of a student, we began a regular bowling night. Some students began to take bowling more seriously and formed a team, buying their own equipment and practicing to improve their skills.

Throughout the week, Friends Together offer different activities on a daily basis. During the day we often focus on crafting workshops, with some workshops geared to specific skills like card-making or cross-stitch, while others offer support to students pursuing individual projects. We have a student initiated gardening project we’re very proud of. Friends Together students are clearing, digging and planting a local allotment. We also run a popular cinema and bowling night and a pub night once a week.

All our activities can be changed – the group has spontaneously decided to do something else more than once. In keeping with the Friends Together ethos, we’re here to support our students in what they want to do. All our current activities were chosen by our students, and new students are free to propose new activities or suggest changing existing ones. We can’t wait to hear your ideas!