Quality & sector Agricola House achieves Headway reaccreditation success!
Across the country, our specialist brain injury rehabilitation services, deliver life-changing support to people who have suffered brain injuries.
Guided by a robust support framework, our teams use expert-led brain injury rehabilitation to empower the people we support to embark on their rehab journeys.
As part of this framework, they receive an additional layer of governance and expertise from Headway, the UK’s brain injury association.
Headway’s expert led ‘Approved Provider’ programme empowers our services to continuously enhance the support they offer, achieving amazing outcomes with the people we support.
Recently, Agricola House, in Greater Manchester, was proudly reaccredited as a Headway Approved Provider! Led by service manager Jack Murray, the team strives to celebrate authenticity, empowering independence in the lives of the people we support.
From their firm embrace of equality, diversity, and inclusion, to their rich sense of family values, they ensure the people we support feel heard, seen, and valued.
We chatted with Agricola House’s Therapy Lead, Jessica Thomas, to paint a picture of life at Agricola House and uncover the secrets to their reaccreditation success.
It’s exciting to receive a reaccreditation with Headway! How did you prepare the household for the assessment?
We were previously accredited by Headway a few years ago. Many of the inspection requirements have been ongoing since then. We always ensure we’re respecting and embodying their guidelines in the support we deliver and how we manage the service.
Before the inspection, we ensured all our display boards around the house were up to date. There are many of these and we use them to display important information. We have Voyage Care updates, Headway literature, and information about the brain and types of brain injuries. These boards are for the people we support as much as our team. We maintain openness and honesty about their care and support and these boards contribute to that. To make the information accessible, we have both written and pictorial versions of information.
As a team, we ran through what questions the inspector might ask during the assessment. This ensured we all felt confident and empowered to answer questions about our home and the people we support.
Most importantly, we prepared the people we support. Many of our housemates have memory deficits, so we relayed information to them each day for a period before the assessment.
On the day, we chatted to them about who Headway are and why they were visiting us. We find everyone at Agricola House goes with the flow when we have new visitors. They just get inquisitive when someone new comes into their home!
Each person we support at Agricola House has a Headway ID card, so they connected the visit to those. These cards are important for people with brain injuries. They help create awareness about their brain injuries. For example, if we went into our local town and someone presented a behaviour, their Headway ID card would be a key tool for showing other people they aren’t being disruptive on purpose.
Would you tell us what happens during a Headway inspection?
Headway will watch us in action as we go about our daily routines with the people we support. They’ll also look at various pieces of evidence, like case studies, workbooks, and support plans. These are essential and document what we’ve done to uphold their criteria for an approved provider.
The inspector looked at what information we have around the service – particularly information about the brain and brain injuries. They also looked at what other tools we have for keeping our team’s knowledge fresh and to help better understand the people we support.
Over the course of the day, Headway provided advice, guidance, and feedback. They also looked at our engagement with our local Headway branch. Located within the community, they offer the people we support opportunities to engage with peers and participate in accessible activities. It’s a valuable resource for many of the people who live at Agricola House.
What does Headway Approved Provider status mean for Agricola House?
As a Headway Approved Provider, we benefit from Headway’s guidance, resources, and panel of experts. It’s an overarching element of governance on the quality of our support. At Headway, there is a body of professionals we can collaborate with and go to for support. They also provide industry-recognised training sessions and programmes that our team can access.
Headway credited your commitment to promoting diversity and equality within the home – would you tell us more about this?
The people we support at Agricola House have diverse backgrounds – as do many of our support team. Collectively, we’re big advocates for equality, diversity, and inclusion. In terms of culture and heritage, we believe it’s important for people to remain connected to their roots – it’s a huge part of their identity.
Acknowledging diversity is also important for uniting us as a household. Our recent celebrations of Nigerian heritage proved the importance of sharing these parts of our lives with each other. They support us to understand each other better.
As a household, we also celebrate and honour other days of inclusion and equality, like LGBTQ events and awareness days.
Incorporating equality and diversity into daily life is important to Headway – it demonstrates respect for – and promotion of – individuality. It’s meaningful to all of us here and is something we’re committed to practicing.
You’ve arranged fundraising events for Headway recently, which they highlighted during your inspection. Why are these important?
Our fundraising events are important because they’re something everyone can get involved in. We’ve recently held two events. The first was walking 100 miles in one month and we broke this down into smaller amounts. Each time a member of our team ran an errand or a person we support did an activity, the distance they walked counted towards our total. Not everyone at Agricola House can walk, so we also counted mobility aid miles – it was important to include everyone.
Together, we hit our target and raised some money for Headway, who are a registered charity. We also held an open day at the service, with lots of activities for guests to take part in. This was successful as well and everybody had so much fun!
The inspection also picked up on how you embody Voyage Care’s ETHOS and family values – how do you promote these at Agricola House?
Our ETHOS – which stands for empowering, together, honest, outstanding, supportive – is at the heart of everything we do as a team and with the people we support.
We always respect each other’s choices. We consider risks and outcomes, but we look at the bigger picture of what’s important to someone.
We respect the values and preferences of the people we support. Even in daily tasks, we consider how each person approaches things. They have the right to do tasks in their own way and in their own time.
Across the team, every team member promotes authenticity in the people we support, as well as encouraging them to make their own choices. If someone needs downtime and to relax in their own way for the day, we respect that. We all know what we need deep-down – more than anyone else – and we must accept and respect that.
Open communication and empowering each other with knowledge is important within our team. We have regular team meetings and forums to share information, good news, and concerns. We also work together collaboratively in as many ways as possible. If there’s a job to do, we work together to get it done. If there’s a problem to solve, we all support each other through it.
Because we’re a small service, we all know each other really well and it’s become more of a family environment.
Family values are important in brain injury rehab. Someone experiences a life-changing event and must adapt to an unfamiliar environment. Naturally, they’ll miss their loved ones, so it’s important to us that we make them feel at home and like a member of an extended family.
As a team, we acknowledge Agricola House is their home first and our workplace second.
Based on your reaccreditation success, what’s next for Agricola House?
We’ll keep doing what we can to ensure everyone who lives and works at Agricola House enjoys vibrant days filled with meaningful activities. Our Service Manager Jack and Deputy Manager Demi are always thinking about how we can connect with our community through events and open days at the service. We’ll be inviting Headway along to our events this year and increasing our engagement with our local Headway group.
For the people we support, we’ve introduced a ‘You Said, We Did’ board within the service. This empowers them to put forward suggestions and requests for anything to do with their home and the support they receive. It’s a visual, interactive board for us all to measure our progress as a household. We want to enhance their voices and ensure they lead the way in shaping Agricola House into an even better place to live.
Find out more!
If you’d like to find out more about our specialist brain injury rehabilitation support and how it could help you, a loved one or a client, fill out our simple form and a member of our friendly team will be in touch.
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