Age: Arthur (21) and Kieran (20)
Location: Wolverhampton, West Midlands
For Arthur Green and Kieran Allan, Christmas 2022 was set to be a normal Christmas, spent at home in Wolverhampton with their mum. But the brothers experienced turmoil when their mum unexpectedly passed away in their home in December 2022, leaving them extremely vulnerable.
Arthur and Kieran both have mixed anxiety-depressive disorder (MADD) – a mental health condition that causes people to suffer from both anxiety and depressive symptoms. People are often diagnosed with MADD when they suffer symptoms of both clinical depression and clinical anxiety but don’t quite meet either diagnosis.
Due to their disability, and the fact that their mum was their primary carer, Arthur and Kieran both struggled to cope with their mum’s passing and were unable to communicate with the outside world. When the local social services authority was eventually made aware that the brothers were living alone, they visited the property and discovered it was unkempt and contained an infestation of bugs, as they had been unable to care for themselves.
“It was a very scary time for me and my brother,” Arthur says. “We were served with an eviction notice by our landlord in March 2023, but we had nowhere else to live. The eviction notice had to be extended multiple times until Select Lifestyles came to our help.”
We received Arthur and Kieran’s referral from the local social services authority and, through our help and support, the brothers moved into one of our shared housing facilities in Wolverhampton in November 2023 – just in time for Christmas.
After an extremely challenging year, coping with the loss of their mum and moving to a new home, we did all we could to help Arthur and Kieran feel settled for their first Christmas with their new friends and carers.
“I really like our new house, we both feel settled and we’re very grateful for all the help we’re receiving. Everybody is very nice and living in a shared house means that we’ve been able to keep our independence,” says Kieran. “After Mum passed away, I was struggling with eating and felt too anxious to go outside, but our new carers have helped me to eat properly again and have given me the confidence to get out and about.
“I love dancing and listening to music, and one of my biggest achievements since moving into our new house is having the confidence to stand up and dance in front of everyone at our monthly discos. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without the help of the team at Select Lifestyles.”
Arthur adds, “Since we moved into Select Lifestyles’ shared house, I feel safe again. The team has helped me with ways to manage my anxiety and depression and it’s so nice to have friends living with us that we can interact with every day.
“When we moved in, we didn’t have very many winter clothes. The team at Select Lifestyles were very helpful and provided us with warm clothes and boots through its Charitable Trust, so we could go out into the community and still be warm.
“Over the Christmas period, we struggled to be without our mum and needed our own space, so we chose to spend a lot of time in our bedrooms to help us cope. We miss her a lot, but we are finally living in a nice, healthy environment and we are so grateful to the staff for helping us to get back on our feet.”
Now we’re into 2024, both Arthur and Kieran are making plans for the year ahead. Arthur hopes to gain employment which will allow him to use his degree in digital marketing and Kieran would like to focus on his education by getting back to school.
The team here at Select Lifestyles fully supports Arthur and Kieran with their ambitions for 2024, and we look forward to seeing everything they achieve as we help them live the life they want.