Views Voyage Care Voice – S2E4 part 2: Treddinoch’s great quality care has changed Margaret’s life
After a successful pilot season of Voyage Care’s first ever podcast, we are excited share our second season with everyone! Relaunching as Voyage Care Voice, our podcast will be showcasing real people with real insights.
In this season, we’ll be focusing on how important quality is in the social care sector. This week’s episode is part 2 of our great quality care in Scotland episode. Be sure to catch-up with last week’s episode before listening to this one.
We’re joined by John, brother of Margaret, a person we support at Treddinoch. He’ll be sharing his sisters’ story, which is a shining example of how quality care can make an undeniable difference to the lives of the people we support and their families.
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If you’d like to learn more about high quality care and support in our residential care homes across the UK, please visit our web page.
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Read the transcript of the podcast below.
Nicole:
Hi, I’m Nicole and I’m from the marketing team here at Voyage Care. This is the second in a two-part episode about Treddinoch, one of our residential care homes in Scotland. If you missed the first part, make sure the catch up on our website.
Nicole:
With me is John, who is the brother of Margaret, a person we support at Treddinoch. Margaret has mild to moderate learning difficulties and anxiety associated with challenging behaviour. She is also bipolar and has type two diabetes. Before Margaret moved to Treddinoch in 2018, she had struggled with various tendencies on her own and had moved between three different hospitals. With support from staff at Treddinoch, Margaret’s behaviour is far less challenging. She now takes pride in her appearance and shows compassion for others, which wasn’t easy for her before due to her difficult past. First of all, John, can you please tell us about your experience with Voyage Care?
John and Margaret’s experience at Treddinoch
John:
I’m John, and Margaret, my sister, is cared for at Treddinoch. We try as a family to visit Margaret as often as we can. It’s been difficult during COVID obviously, but she’s just had a great time in terms of making the best of that here. It’s just a pleasure for us to visit Treddinoch. The experience that we’ve had as a family, I did describe it before as some kind of magic, because I think it’s all about how you feel when you visit and when you leave and how it makes you feel. And it is very hard with care, I think, to have any yardstick to measure what’s there and what’s happening. And it’s a feeling that you know you get every time you visit.
John:
In terms of my sister, she really has completely turned around and has a quality of life that we could never have hoped for. And she just really enjoys being here and constantly refers to it as being family, her home, which is lovely to hear. And again, for us coming to visit as well, you do feel you’re part of a family very much so, and nothing’s too big or too small to ask and for the staff management to help. That’s a great feeling.
John:
I think, particularly during COVID, in terms of the approach to that and how things were going to go. But in fact, it’s probably all come down to be a positive, in that my sister has actually seems to have thrived on the way that she’s been cared for during COVID and kept safe and secure, which is the main thing. I had been saying that you read so much on the news about how people with a learning disability are so much more affected by COVID. And so that makes your worry more acute. But in fact, from day one, we were very reassured and constantly assured and felt really safe.
Nicole:
It’s great to hear that she’s thrived. Is there any kind of examples you could give of how she’s been able to thrive during this period?
John:
Just in terms of what she’s been doing at Treddinoch, in terms of even just the food. She had such an interest in the food and she helped to prepare the food. That’s something that she’s never done and she’s never felt able to do. And now when we speak on the phone, or in fact, the staff here had suggested one of the great things that helped during COVID was that the staff here had suggested that Margaret and I do video calls, and she got a great deal out of that. She would tell me about what she was doing and she was helping with the meals and any events that were here inside. And just a general feeling that when I spoke to her I could tell right away that she was coping fine. COVID is difficult for everybody, and I think for everyone at Treddinoch have been not able to have a routine for so long and be able to not just get through that, but as I say, thrive on it and lots of positive. I think one of the things is that the staff always are looking ahead and into the future and my sister seems to thrive on that.
Nicole:
Gosh, my next question was going to be, what do you think your sister’s favourite part of Treddinoch is, but there seems to be so much.
John:
There is, really. And I suppose the answer to that is she genuinely feels part of a family and she does talk about, if I’d maybe got her out anywhere before COVID, can you take me home now? That’s lovely to hear can you take me home because she was never able to say that before. And she also gets an enjoyment out of many, many things. One of the really difficult things as a family was we tried to get Margaret to go to the cinema because we thought she would get a lot out of that and we never ever achieved it and nobody did. But through Treddinoch, she had been then going on a regular basis to the cinema and telling us how she really enjoyed that and her popcorn and the film itself.
John:
I think it’s about her being able to just be not overwhelmed by anxiety, but because of the care she gets, that anxiety seems to lessen so much to the point where she can actually enjoy things and sometimes even reflect and be aware of other situations as well. It’s lovely to see her being able to just take notice of things around her, which she couldn’t before she came to Treddinoch. Just recently speaking to her, she was talking about her room, where she loves her room and the flowers in her room and the things on the wall and different things. And it’s great just to hear her be appreciative of things that you and I would take for granted and that she never had before she came here.
Nicole:
That’s so lovely to hear the difference that the team have made. I know we talk a lot about quality and what that means when it comes to the support we provide. Have you experienced how the focus on quality feeds into your sister’s care plan?
How quality feeds into Margaret’s care plan
John:
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s about the staff and managers looking ahead for Margaret and things that are maybe happening in the future or any difficulty that she has, how that can be resolved. And I think more than anything, what I’ve noticed is that even when something happens, the staff, they have Margaret’s back in the sense that she’s very vulnerable and that even I would be thinking what’s happened. The staff would be explaining what happened and maybe why it happened and how to deal with that in a way that, for Margaret, is just very personal and very lovely. And even in the most challenging situations with her, the staff never falter. There’s never a time where any of her behavior is seen as all negative. It’s probably turned around all the time into a positive.
John:
And so that’s great to see. And that support goes to us as a family as well. We have friends that have people in care situations and they don’t get anything like the support that we have always got here as a family. And that’s something you can’t buy and it gives us peace of mind knowing that Margaret’s somewhere safe and secure and happy. And we know that she’s being dealt with in a totally professional and absolutely compassionate way. And the staff just always seem to be empathetic in terms of whatever might be happening in terms of behaviour. We are very aware that we are very lucky to have found Treddinoch. It took a long time to find the right care for Margaret and such special care.
Nicole:
And I think that’s the key focus, supporting both the family and the individual with compassion and professionalism. Overall, would you recommend Voyage Care, and if so, why?
Getting the old Margaret back
John:
Yeah. I mean, the bias because of how it makes us feel as a family and how it has enhanced Margaret’s quality of life, it’s like getting the old Margaret back, if you like. That she is able to just enjoy things and that has just made such a difference. I had said recently it’s not something money can buy, in terms of the excellent care that Margaret gets. You can’t buy that. That’s something that it wouldn’t matter if we won the lottery, we wouldn’t be able to buy that. It’s very special here and you can’t really put a price on the type of care that Margaret has received. It’s just been brilliant and made such a difference to us as a family.
John:
There are times regularly, whether it’s on the phone or whether I’m out here and I go away and I do cry, but I cry of happiness. Never expected to find care like this. And it might be just something Margaret said or she appreciated, or she’s commented on that she never would do before. She’s got an awareness of people around her and she’ll often say things that lead me to think, oh, she’s taken on board that other people have the difficulties as well and she understands that. Maybe not fully, but she understands that and that she has… I think what I’m trying to say is she’s, at Treddinoch, found a way for her to care for other people or care about other people that was difficult for her. That’s made such a difference. It might just be how the staff dealt with something that was just so lovely and the way that it was dealt with, and yet it was such a serious situation to me, but the staff deal with it in a way that it’s brought right down and kept down. That just makes all the difference to us as a family.
Nicole:
Truly sounds like from what you’ve said that Margaret’s found herself at Treddinoch. Really blossomed into who she is.
John:
I was going through things yesterday, actually, and I’ve got it somewhere in the car, I brought it in to show the staff. And it’s a picture of Margaret when she was young. And that made me think as well, that there’s a lot about Margaret from when she was really young. And she was a great sister, and then she had difficult times for a long time. And it was a long thing trying to find her the care that would work for Margaret. It’s hard. It’s hard to say what they do here. I don’t know, it’s just it is magic and it is a privilege to come and visit. And I sense, as time goes on, it does get better. She just continues to improve in different ways and enjoy things. And it is a pleasure to take her out, whereas before she was always really quite sad, quite upset, totally not settled. The minute I would bring her back, she would be back to worrying about everything. And that’s the thing now, the worry, Treddinoch’s taken the worry away from her.
Nicole:
What else do you have planned for today then with Margaret?
John:
Well, I’m just about to visit her. It’s funny, as time goes on, you find that she never really had any interests, but she has now. And one of the things she always talks about is flowers. She likes flowers. Doesn’t like bees and wasps, she’s terrified of them, but she likes flowers. Today I brought just a small flower. I just find out more about the things that she likes and likes to do. She does seem to really enjoy helping to cook, which I never knew she had an interest in. But she does talk about that a lot.
Nicole:
John, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us today and share yours and Margaret’s story. It’s a shining example of how quality care can make an undeniable difference to the lives of the people we support and their families. We know that it can be hard to find support that works for you. If you’re still looking for your Treddinoch, get in touch with our friendly team who will support you to find a care setting that works for you or your loved one.
Amanda:
Thanks for listening to find out more about our focus on quality, please visit our website at www.voyagecare.com.
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