How Greenhill, Venture People’s supported living service for men with complex needs, helps people move beyond labels and reclaim their own story — through trust, choice and the power of Positive Behaviour Support.
Venture People do things differently. Their Greenhill service, opened in March 2020, supports adult men with complex mental health needs and forensic histories — but not in the way people might expect. With a tight‑knit, skilled team and a genuinely person‑centred ethos, Greenhill offers recovery‑focused, reablement‑based support that’s compassionate, consistent and rooted in Positive Behaviour Support. In short: they meet people where they are, and walk with them from there.
Many of the men arriving at Greenhill have been through the system more times than they can count. They’ve experienced placement breakdowns, homelessness risks, and services that made decisions about them rather than with them. Too often, those experiences come with labels that stick — labels that overshadow strengths, silence potential and shape how people are seen before they’ve even walked through the doors. When that happens, the outcome is almost always the same — disengagement, mistrust, and a revolving door of support that never quite sticks. Greenhill flips that script. The team start from a simple but powerful belief: behaviour is communication. When you listen properly, everything changes.
Their work takes place in supported living settings with people who’ve known instability for far too long. The aim is to create a space where each person can define who they are, how they want to be supported, and what a good life looks like for them. And it all begins with relationships — real ones. Time spent getting to know someone, understanding their history, building trust. It’s not an optional extra; it’s the foundation. And the evidence backs it up: strong therapeutic relationships lead to better engagement and better outcomes.
You see this most clearly in stories like Lennon’s. At just 20, he arrived after several service breakdowns, carrying a dream he’d never really shared: he wanted to DJ in front of a crowd. In many settings, that might have been dismissed as unrealistic. At Greenhill, it became a plan. The team didn’t just say yes — they helped him make it happen. Lennon chose the music, the setup, the vibe. Service users and staff from across Venture People came along, turning it into a shared celebration of music, confidence and connection.
The feedback said it all: “Dancing, laughing and joking — a good day out. I’d like my own birthday party with him DJing.” The event wasn’t perfect, and that’s exactly why it worked. It was his. He owned it. And in doing so, he grew — in confidence, in trust, in his sense of who he could be. Suddenly, Lennon wasn’t defined by past behaviours or placement breakdowns. He was defined by creativity, ambition and choice.
That one moment of being believed in opened the door to a future he can actually imagine. Now he’s exploring music college in Brighton and even looking at work opportunities in the security industry. It’s a reminder that empowerment doesn’t always start with a grand plan — sometimes it starts with a beat, a crowd, and someone saying “yes, let’s try.”
Greenhill House is a service with heart and purpose. It helps people build independent life skills, reconnect with their communities and rediscover their strengths. Positive Behaviour Support isn’t just a model here — it’s the lens through which every person is seen, heard and understood. As one professional put it: “The way you and the staff team are working with Lennon, alongside him, is brilliant… your hard work and interventions are clearly helping him enormously.”
Greenhill shows what’s possible when you stop managing people’s pasts and start supporting their futures.
