RIBS:Richmond Independent Brokerage Service

RIBS: Richmond Independent Brokerage Service is a consortium of voluntary groups set up to develop and provide advice, information and a Support Brokerage Service to individuals with social care needs. RIBS consists of 9 partner organisations: RUILS, Age Concern, VoiceAbility, Richmond AID, Richmond Crossroads, Richmond Carers Centre, Richmond Homes and Lifestyle Trust, Richmond Mencap, Richmond Borough MIND.



What we do

You will be referred to us, usually if you are thinking of using a direct payment as a way of obtaining support to suit your needs.

• We visit you at home and talk to you about your needs and the types of support you might think about.
• We will try to find out what’s important to you and help you to think about options and costs and we like to include loved ones and friends in the discussions.
• We help you to put together a support plan and a budget – you can write it yourself, or we can do it with you. Then we will help to get this approved by Social Services.

After it’s approved we help you to set up the services and activities in the plan.



You can find out more about Support Planning by clicking here

An example of what we do

Mrs M has dementia and is supported by her daughter who runs her own business. Mrs M was having a small amount of support from the mental health team but this was about to finish. Mrs M was becoming less and less able to manage her daily life but could not accept this and continued to go out and about, getting into a scrape or two quite often. Because of her business commitments her daughter was unable to give the support her Mum needed, but knew that traditional services could never work. Mrs M was referred to RIBS by social services and a Support Broker went along to see her and her daughter at home. The support broker found out about Mrs M’s history and what was important to her by chatting in an informal way and helped Mrs M and her daughter to think about the kind of support which might work best. One of the options was recruiting a PA – someone who would work directly for Mrs M and her daughter and could become a friend and companion, more than a ‘support worker’. Mrs M and her daughter had not heard of such a thing and were a little sceptical at first about the paperwork and legalities of being an employer. But with the help of their Support Broker, a plan was written and approved and RUILS paFinder service used to find a delightful PA, who is about to start her duties. This will include going out and about with Mrs M as well as helping her to manage her daily life at home. Mrs M’s daughter used the Ruils on-line recruitment handbook www.employ-a-pa.co.uk to guide her through the process of interviewing and employing their PA and was surprised how smoothly it all went in the end, saying.., ‘Many thanks as always for your super help and support – I couldn’t be doing any of this without you!’

When we are available

Wendy Duldig (at VoiceAbility) is a Support Broker. Paula Buckton (employed by RUILS) is a Support Planner

Our regular working hours are Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm although we aim to be flexible and can sometimes contact clients out of hours if this is more convenient. 


How to contact us

Helpline Tel: 020 8831 6083
Email: info@ruils.co.uk