Views Voyage Care Podcast S1E7: Georgina and Jen – Person-centred care in our supported living properties
Welcome to the final episode of season one of the brand-new Voyage Care podcast. In this episode we’ll be hearing from Georgina Cooper, branch manager of Norfolk DCA and Jen Cross, field care manager. They’ll be sharing how the person-centred care approach works in our supported living properties, and they even throw in a story about the legendary pop star Cher.
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If you’d like to learn more about person-centred care in our supported living properties across the UK, please visit our web page.
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Read the transcript of the podcast below.
Georgina:
Hello, welcome to the Voyage Care podcast. I’m Georgina Cooper, and I’m the branch manager for the Norfolk DCA. So we cover the supported living for Norfolk. I’m joined today by Jen Cross, who is with me, who I’ll now let you introduce.
Jen:
Georgina:
Okay so, as you were saying, Jen, that you were completely new to care. Did you have any idea of what person-centred care was when you joined?
Jen:
Well, I mean, just obviously from the title of it, person-centred care, it’s all about the individual and it’s centred around what their needs, wants and wishes are. But in respect obviously, I was completely new to care. I mean, my previous sort of career was in manufacturing, etc. So although I had worked as a volunteer sort of like in the community, so that obviously since joining Voyage Care with everything excepting stuff like that, then it’s kind of quite apparent it’s about listening to individuals, what they’re wanting to do and sort of making that happen and enabling them to be able to do, or supporting them, now to do, around their needs.
Georgina:
Yeah, so I think, and I’m very, very much like Jen. I’ve been with Voyage Care for 13 years now. So within the company, I’ve seen it grow, where we’ve gone through all of the person-centred reviews, making sure that we actually listen to what our guys want, how they want support, what their dreams are, what their aspirations are, what their goals are and how we’ve got to them for some of them.
And some of them have been really big goals and dreams that people and families didn’t think would come true. So I think Jen is just going to start us off with one where we worked with one of our guys in one of our supported living services to reach his goals and dreams.
Jen:
Yeah. So this individual was fanatical, absolutely loves music and would attend a lot of events sort of in the community, like Music in the Park, has even gone to London Hyde park to, I believe it was Radio One Music in the Park, etc. But this individual was fanatical about Cher, absolutely loved Cher, and when we get into it, because this individual likes to go to concerts, etc. When we looked into it, unfortunately Cher was not going to be touring no more sort of around the world and Cher was going to be having her last concert in Las Vegas. So we thought, “Right, if this individual can’t see Cher in England, then we make his dream come true,” and this individual went to Vegas to see Cher in her last concert.
So there was a lot of, sort of like arranging and planning to obviously sort of like make this dream come true for this individual. This individual had never flown before so we implemented sort of like going to local airports, to get him familiar with that type of surrounding, and sort of like the process. This individual does have quite high support needs. So we needed sort of like extra support and facilities at the airport. So that was all arranged, etc, and yeah, his dream come true. Went to Vegas on holiday to see Cher and have an absolutely fantastic time.
Georgina:
Yeah, and I think that was really, really good. A lot of work went into that. I think that that’s a really massive thing that we were able to do during that time. I think, other things that we’ve done, we’ve got another service where we’ve had a lady who’s lived there for 16 years now and wants to remain living there. During those 16 years, obviously her health changed quite a lot. She needed different types of equipment. When she moved into that house, it wasn’t that up for that type of equipment, for hoists, for anything. The staff, as well as working with local authority, managed to source how they could put in the equipment into the space it was, where they could put the ramps in order this person to obviously stay there and be able to spend the rest of her days as she wishes living in her home that she’s been there for the last 16 years.
Georgina:
So again, that’s a different thing, working with local authority, working with contractors to help do that. But I think that there’s lots of ways of person-centred. So they’re two quite big things, I think. Other things that we used as well is a lot of assistive technology. We’ve helped people become independent. We’ve got some services where they are set up, they are enablement, that’s so their care package needs to be completely bespoke to them. We will do an assessment when they first move in and we will spend the first few weeks doing quite intense work with them. We will learn where their skills are, where they need help to develop them, what they want out of the enablement service to move on. We’re very fortunate that we have got on our success stories from them. And we’ve had people move from the enablement service who are now living within their own home in the community. It’s worked really well.
Georgina:
We’ve put different things in, so we’ll use Alexa’s and things like that, that will tell somebody when they need to take their tablets or remind them that they may need to have a drink. It also enables them to make phone calls if they can’t quite use the telephone because their telephones can be set up to that, and they can just voice call through that.
Jen:
So we got another, an individual in one of my services and this individual was quite a shy young person, etc, and stuff like that. And his mobility, he needed quite a lot of assistance with mobility. So staff were speaking with this individual to try and improve his confidence, etc, and stuff like that, all around the things that he likes to do, which is going to football, etc, and stuff like that. So it was this individual, the staff thought would a mobility scooter sort of help? And since, with the support with that, and getting the mobility scooter implemented, this young individual has absolutely flourished. His confidence is now through the roof. It also enables him to go out independently if he so wishes. So it just gives him a lot more variety and scope to be able to do things that he would like to be able to do.
Georgina:
Okay, I think that brings us on to how has it been through COVID-19, obviously, as you can tell from the stories, a lot of them were pre-COVID-19. What we actually tried to do is still complete the person-centred approach with reviews with the people we support. We’ve come up with different ways where we use the Helen Anderson approach. We’ve both been here long enough to have done the original person-centred training back a while ago, and we use that all the time. Obviously, during COVID, getting people into the room, discussing things, haven’t been able to happen, but we still managed to carry out some person-centred reviews to ensure that we are still working with all of our guys through the pandemic. So we’ve managed to do that with teams. We’ve managed to do it on phone calls. We’ve even done it with the pen and paper.
People have written us reviews or they’ve written us letters to say how we’ve helped people. We’ve got a family member who’s written a how person-centred it was and how important that was to them during COVID. Unfortunately they did get COVID. But the fact that the staff still made everything about that person, they feel actually helped towards their recovery and being able to understand what the needs were. We’ve managed to keep people in touch with all of their families, again, using technology. People we support who’ve got tablets and different things, we’ve learned, and we’ve helped support the families as well, as not all of them are great with technology. So we’ve been able to set that up and help with that.
The other things that we’ve also done throughout COVID person-centred, is we’ve really learned new skills with some of our people we support. Lots of them around healthy eating and healthy lifestyles promoting cooking. Because everybody’s been home, we’ve turned it into actually, we’ve got more time to plan meals and to cook meals with some of our people, as pre-COVID, they were very, very busy people, they were always out and about whether it was day services, clubs, meeting friends. Obviously that hasn’t happened for the last 18 months. They’ve been doing thing in, we’ve got one gentleman who’s lost an awful lot of weight and now very, very interested in healthy eating, going out, doing exercise and following things like that.
Jen:
Yeah. So the individual that you’ve just talked about, who’s lost a lot weight, etc and stuff like that, he is so happy that he’s lost the weight that actually he is encouraging his peers to do the same. So when he’s gone back after those services, actually he’s sharing his story to encourage other, enable others.
Georgina:
Okay Jen. So we’ve obviously talked about people’s successes and what they’ve done. So how does that make you feel when people achieve their dreams and their goals and aspirations?
Jen:
It’s a feeling that you really can’t describe. It is an absolute, amazing feeling when you see the individuals and like when they’re chatting to you about what they’ve done and stuff like that, and their facial expressions and their excitement of their achievement of what they’ve done, so be it a holiday, I mean an achievement can be, depending on the individual, it can be a very small goal, maybe just being able to take their laundry back to their room and put it in their drawers, to some bigger goals, like a lifetime holiday, and stuff like that. And it just makes you feel so proud, sort of like of that individual, and the team, because there is a team around that individual that are making these goals and aspirations and dreams sort of like come true. And it just does make you feel so, so proud, that everybody working together, and making things happen for individuals. You can’t describe that feeling. You can’t describe that feeling. So how about you? And how does that make you feel? I mean, you’ve got quite a lot of experience, and made things happen for a lot of individuals?
Georgina:
Yeah, so I think it obviously makes you feel good and it makes you feel proud of them, make you feel very proud of the teams that have obviously been the ones that have been working intensely with them to get that stage. I think another example I’ve got in a service is we had a person that had come in, moved in, was perfectly mobile, would open every door in the house, would never, ever shut a door.
Georgina:
And we were always told that we would never, ever get him to shut a door behind himself, and actually with the staff going, “Come on, we need to shut this door, we need to shut this door.” I just remember going into a service one day and watching him shut a door, and it was just so good to be see that actually that little bit of independence, that little bit of improvement just by how hard the actual team had worked together, all being consistent, to do that. So I mean, yeah, that’s why we do the job. We do the job for those very reasons, to make sure that we can fulfill our guys’ life as much as we possibly can and make them as meaningful for them as we can.
Jen:
Okay. So Georgina, why is person-centred care so important to you?
Georgina:
I think it is important that actually, especially in some of our supported living services, they live with other people. So it is important that everybody gets to fulfill their life. Everybody gets the support they want. So I know we work very hard in all of our services to make sure our staffing levels are around the people we support so that they can go out, they can do shopping, but actually they don’t have to all do it together if they don’t want to. They can learn different skills. Everybody who lives with everybody has different skills. They have different abilities, they have different aspirations in life. They want to learn different things. So the person-centred approach is about talking to that individual, working with that individual, getting that from them and then putting in their support to be able to fulfill that for that person.
It goes back to ensuring that obviously they’ve got a fulfilled life, a good quality of life, and they are doing the things that they want in life, not what their housemates wants in life, not what other people around them may want from life. And it’s also making sure that actually, maybe we don’t always get to do everything that we want in life, I think that’s fair to say for all of us, but it’s also about working with that person, with the reasons why it may not be able to happen, or it may take a bit longer, but it’s about fulfilling their life, fulfilling their dreams and making sure that they’re careful, they’re respected. Everybody is treated with dignity and respect in a way that they want to be, and just towards independent living. Jen, how about you?
Jen:
The most important person is that person at the centre of that plan, and I think that’s what has to be focused on and is focused on, by our support teams and the tools and the great tools that we are given as well to enable person-centred. But for me, really what’s important about this is, is the individual empowering them, making them feel valued and listened to. Can we help you achieve your goals, etc, and stuff like that. That’s going to make somebody feel valued, it’s going to make somebody, give them confidence, etc. And ultimately they’re able to control what happens to them, etc and stuff like that. That’s what that means to me is actually that individual feeling, “Actually yeah, I’m being listened to,” and as we know, some individuals, we are their voice. They’re unable to have a voice. So that’s it again, that makes them feel empowered and valued and respected
Georgina:
We’ve come to the end of the podcast today. I’m talking about person-centred care, I hope you enjoyed listening to us and about the different things that we do.
Jen:
Yes. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. It’s been… It’s given me such a lovely feeling actually to go over some of the great stories that we’ve had and what we have been have done for individuals, and there are so many, and I think we’re doing it day in and day out that sometimes it can be such a small, small thing or like a massive thing, and it just is lovely to sort of like, remembering those things and current things that are going on, and I’m thinking of teams that are doing it day in and day out and don’t actually realize the absolute, amazing job that they are doing for our individuals, making their dreams come true.
If you’d like to learn more about person-centred care in our supported living properties across the UK, please visit our web page.
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