Our clients

Our clients are the unusual cases. They are always on the margins of other services, always exceptions to the rule.

Our clients include sex workers, asylum seekers, chaotic young people, ex-offenders, travellers and other vulnerable people who cannot, or will not, engage with mainstream service providers. We have a high number of female clients. An increasing number of our clients are from Black and Minority Ethnic groups.

Working with people with complex needs

By complex needs, we mean multiple, interdependent and intractable health and social issues. Typically, our clients have a combination of at least three of these issues: mental health, drug and alcohol misuse, offending, inadequate housing or homelessness, difficulty forming and sustaining relationships, physical disability, self-harming, learning difficulties, domestic violence, and experiences of abuse or neglect. They typically live in deprived circumstances, and lack access to suitable housing, employment and meaningful daily activities.

People with complex needs often develop dysfunctional coping mechanisms such as mistrust of authority, self-harming, acting out, aggressive behaviour and rejecting others to avoid rejection. These mechanisms help people cope day-to-day but leave them feeling restricted and isolated. They are difficult to engage because they do not trust service providers and rarely access services voluntarily. They are usually well known to local statutory and voluntary services, councils and criminal justice agencies, although some people are less visible in society and harder to identify.

Mainstream services are designed to meet the needs of the majority of people living in our community and usually cannot cope with challenging, atypical people. Therefore, people who have complex needs are typically excluded from mainstream services, resulting in their inappropriate use of emergency responses. This is costly to society.

Why do people become Elmore clients?

• A person's needs are undiagnosed and therefore unmet.
• No single issue is severe enough to warrant a statutory service even though the combination of needs is acute.
• A person is resistant or distrustful about engaging with service providers, which is based on past negative experiences.
• The service providers involved with a person may disagree about their respective responsibilities.
• A person's aggression or chaotic behaviours may be too challenging for mainstream service providers.
• Services typically are designed to help with a specific issue rather than provide the consistent and comprehensive support and stability required by a person who has complex needs.

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