What are Day Opportunities and Inclusion Support?
Day Opportunities are usually held in groups and run as a fixed session. They can take place from community settings such as:
- village halls, or
- local sports facilities
- as well as from providers’ own venues.
Some of the sessions will be aiming towards employment, for example in horticulture, and others will be for good health, for example a regular exercise group. Some will be simply for fun, hobbies and interests!
Inclusion Support will usually take place from your own home and in community settings. It might be part of a wider support package, or by itself. Your opportunities will be designed with you, to help you live the life you want. It will help you to be part of your chosen community, discovering interests and abilities and building on these. It can also be helping you develop life skills, and help you prepare to work, if that is what you choose.
You will be able to buy this support per hour and it will be tailored to what you want.
Who can take part in these opportunities?
You can use Day Opportunities or Inclusion Support if you are an adult over the age of 18, with eligible needs following a Care Act needs assessment.
You can get involved if you have support paid for by us, or a Direct Payment or Individual Service Fund. You can also access this support if you are a self-funder and you pay for support yourself.
How does it work?
Your case worker will discuss with you how you could arrange the support. They can discuss day opportunities and inclusion support with you while planning your care and support, and discuss with you what you want to achieve, and what outcomes are important to you – as well as how to support you to reach them. They will discuss with you how this will be paid for and arrange a financial assessment if you need one.
You can use the directory to find sessions and support that are interesting to you. You can ask for help from your case worker, if necessary. They will check with the providers to find out if there are spaces on those sessions for you. After that, you might be offered a trial session, or a visit.
You will work with your case worker to make your Care and Support Plan, that lists all the sessions and support that you have agreed together, as well as any other details. They will also make a list of other suitable sessions and support that are available, that also meet your needs and outcomes. These are options that you can hold onto for another time and will be able to change to if you want. All these details, including payment information, will be set up on our system, and details of what you want to do will be sent to the provider.
Once you have started, we will organise a review at six weeks, to make sure everything is going well. We will also organise a review after a year.
How do I choose?
Once you have had your assessment, you can use the directory to find opportunities or support that meet your needs.
- You can start by putting in your nearest town – or a town that you can easily get to. You might find that, if you live in Redruth, there are services in Truro that you can get to by train that are exactly what you want.
- Then you can tick the boxes for any additional needs you have – for example dementia friendly, or vision impairment friendly.
- You tick the days of the week that you’re interested in, and your age range, so that the options that come up happen on days that you can manage and are suitable for you.
- Then you tick any of the ‘I am interested in’ options. You can tick more than one, even ones that don’t go together – ‘being inside’ and ‘connecting with nature’ can both be your interests.
- Once you have ticked everything of relevance, press Search, and see what results come up.
- You can click on these links and find out more about the sessions or support. It will show you all the information you might need – wheelchair accessibility, minimum signup requirements, cost and all the contact details for the provider.
- Look at all the options and decide what you like the look of. You can choose more than one, and you can choose things from different providers. You don’t have to choose everything you like at once and can hold onto some ideas for later.
- At the bottom of each listing, there are details of how you can arrange the session. You can contact the provider if you are funding yourself, or ask Adult Social Care to contact them if you have chosen for us to arrange your care.
If the activity you would like to do isn't on our list, please get in touch. We are always looking to improve the variety of opportunities we offer people. We cannot promise to provide everything that people ask for, and it might take us a while to find a provider for what you are looking for.
Can I change?
Yes.
The system has been set up to enable people to change, so that no-one is stuck doing something they hate, or are bored of, or that simply isn’t what they want to do any more.
If you want to change what you are doing, contact the Independence and Wellbeing Service to discuss how this will work.
Paying for opportunities
The cost of day opportunities is listed in the directory. You can find out more about payments, on the Fees and Charges page.
Transport
If you need to find out more about transport, and eligibility, then you can find out more on the Transport page.
For organisations
If you are an organisation that wishes to provide day opportunities or inclusion support, or currently offer these opportunities, please visit our Provider Portal, where you will find further information.
Visit our Provider Platform for commissioned services
What people want from Day Opportunities
We did some research in 2024 into what people wanted from Day Opportunities and Inclusion Support. This is the report about what they told us.
The five most important things that people told us about when we spoke to them were:
- Purpose and contribution – having a job, volunteering or helping others.
- People and relationships – friends, family and carers
- Community – being part of the community where people live
- Transport – better transport to be able to do the things people wanted to do
- Interest and hobbies – taking part in activities, and trying new things