Our Care Director, Edward Pollard originally worked in care supporting people with learning disabilities and mental health needs for over 20 years.  He saw the struggle that deaf people in care face without access to communication. Having staff who couldn’t communicate with them left people more vulnerable and isolated than ever and at risk of worsening mental health. This gave him the idea to set up a home specially for deaf people, so he linked up with a local businessman and the first home Manor Lodge was born. It opened in 2003 as a residential care home and grew to support ten people in a fully Deaf environment.

The company changed direction in 2008 to become a supported living provider to encourage choice, control and community inclusion. We became a limited company in 2010 and changed our name to Homelife (Leeds) Ltd.

In 2012 we created Openspace, our day service in Beeston. A creative environment with sign language at the heart of everything we do.

In 2018 we re-located our head office and Openspace to the Deaf Centre in Leeds to help us be closer integrated with the Deaf community in Leeds. 

History

Future

Our priority has always been and always will be to form a central part of the local deaf community and support people with learning disabilities and/or mental health issues. 

This will never change. We will focus on care in our existing environments, we may even look into additional ways to support people locally or look further afield into new towns and cities but supporting Deaf people will always be our goal.