‘SCHA continues to be an absolutely crucial element in ensuring his continuing mental health stability and safety.’
We recently received a letter from John and Claire, parents of ‘A’ – a Cranmore Court resident with complex, severe mental health disability.
In the letter, they shared that before the SCHA intervened to provide safe and stable long-term housing, life was looking extremely bleak for their son.
Dear SCHA,
We are writing to you about our son, A, who is one of your SCHA residents at Cranmore Court in Shirley.
A is under the long-term (for life) ‘outreach’ care of Solihull Mental Health Services. As you are aware, he has a complex, severe mental health disability and is totally reliant on the integrated support that covers his housing, pastoral and mental health and wellbeing. His ‘supported living’ flat at Cranmore Court, managed by SCHA, continues to be an absolutely crucial element in ensuring his continuing mental health stability and safety.
We have seen in the local and national media that local councils are considering making further cuts to their budgets, and this may impact the supported housing sector.
This is causing us some anxiety as we manage and care for family members living locally who are disabled (A’s grandmother and aunt). His father and sister are also disabled with long-term ME/CFS, and so A’s mother is now the primary carer for her husband and daughter. The family situation is challenging.
We thought we should write to tell you a little about the journey A and his close family have been on over the last decade.
A has struggled with schizophrenia for many years. Before the SCHA intervened to provide safe and stable long-term housing, life was looking extremely bleak for him.
After suffering a number of acute episodes of psychosis, along with related suicide attempts and multiple A&E urgent admissions, he spent periods as an in-patient at several mental health units, including in Solihull and Birmingham (the ‘old’ Bruce Burns Ward at Solihull Hospital and the Oleaster at the QE in Birmingham).
Between his NHS mental health in-patient stays, he had been living in unsupported and squalid temporary (private landlord) accommodation with no pastoral oversight for a number of years. During this time, his mental health had deteriorated further and significantly, and he was on a trajectory to serious alcohol and substance abuse. Before SCHA provided the essential supported housing for A, we were totally overwhelmed and at the point of definitive family break-up.
The SCHA’s housing intervention, in association with the mental health services team locally, has saved his life and kept our family functioning both relationally and economically (allowing us to remain in work and economically active).
Quite simply, the stability that A is now experiencing is down to SCHA’s good work alongside the local mental health services team. However, given the nature of his condition, A will always be vulnerable and his mental health is fragile. The ability of his close family to function effectively and to continue to make their economic and social contributions to local life is also fragile.
The SCHA team has done a really excellent job over recent years in helping to ensure his ongoing safety and wellbeing. This could not have happened without your good support work and timely care!
So, we would ask you at SCHA to do all that you can to ensure that our son continues to be housed in a decent and humane environment that allows him to live safely and supported by people who care about him.
John & Claire (parents)
3rd August 2025
Supplementary Note
Recent research funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) (Cartagena-Ferias & Brimblecombe, 2023) suggests that unpaid care potentially costs the UK government between £6 and £21 billion per year in lost economic activity on the part of carers: a truly staggering figure, especially given the UK’s long-standing productivity challenge.
From the perspective of local authority, NHS and wider government finances, the wider opportunity cost argument re: maintaining SCHA independent supported living interventions for people with severe mental health disability, would seem to be a ‘no brainer’.
