7 Months On

OK, so it's been seven long months since i last posted, what has changed ?

Well Everything!

My Morale is up, pay is up, responsibility is up, sense of belonging is up, and my satisfaction levels are up.

From June the 12th I made a big change and came to work for a company with a better ethos, with better management and a fantastic attitude towards not only it's clients, but it's carers / support workers also.

I have reduced the amount of personal care I deliver and increased the amount of support work I deliver, and I have never felt better. Increasing the level of support work I do has allowed me to see better the differences I can make to a persons life, simply by helping them achieve there goals and further themselves, seeing the difference in a person that is empowered is an amazing thing.

That said, don't get me wrong, I also place a lot of onus on personal care, I just talk less of it as I have much more experience of it, it too is an invaluable part of a care / support workers key skill set and really hits home just how much we can assist people with their wishes of remaining in there own home and how we can keep them safe and well.

I have also accepted a Team Lead role within the new company and although hours do not permit me to push as much focus in that direction as I would like to quite yet, that time is coming fast and I am looking forward to it greatly, the management team is open to input and challenge and it is refreshing and revitalizing to my psyche to have that sort of an individual around me, pushing me for my opinion and efforts and showing respect and gratitude for them.

This new company is everything that my old company was not, it's goals are what they should be, it's energy and focus is upbeat and genuine and it's acceptance of the factors that ruin this sort of company and their stance to protect the company from them is incredible.

And what's more, it is seeking to solidify a strong and stable structure as it grows while maintaining the ability to flex and accommodate in the way that a company within this industry should and it is doing so at a safe speed and with a critical eye. FANTASTIC!

Care Today

Been thinking about care again, surprise, surprise.

While I understand the position councils are taking on care with regards to the budget cuts they all face, I don't understand why the have no focus what so ever on the lives of the carers that are providing the actual care to the end client. At the end of the day when it comes down to tendering for council preference, I don't understand why there is no attention payed to this. Looking at insurance, financial standing, health and safety, equality and diversity and technical ability is not enough. While it would be ridiculous of me to state that carers should earn at least £8 an hour and such, it's not ridiculous of me to say that councils should be ensuring that when companies up charges inline with inflation then carers wages should be upped inline with inflation also, there should be a serious approach in the tender process to looking at the lives of the carers that work for the company in the way calls are put upon them, working hours and patterns, benefits and morale. Then maybe we could see a reduction in staff cycling and an improvement in continuity which is the thing that Government, Local Authorities, Care Service Providers, Service Users and good carers themselves all crave!

Cycling

Cycling of staff in and out of care services put those that have the right mindset when providing care under greater and greater pressure, when we see standards dropping it takes our morale with it, let's face it, the increasing need for care has created a culture in which people come into our industry simply to earn money to go out at the weekend, or to get away from the dole making them answer to them on a weekly basis. Unless you have empathy for the people you care for, you should not be caring for them!

This Is A Career

Anyone coming into this industry should be made blatantly aware that this business is a career not a job and that their mere presence makes a massive difference to the people that they visit, whether they say or do good or bad things makes a difference to that individual.

About My Opinion

Just for reference there is no arrow pointing to a company in this text, I have been doing research into morale, standards and working patterns from one end of the country to the other in a bid to better understand the industry and how I should approach my own position, and what I am reading from carer forums, service user forums (and family's of) tells me that cycling is a huge problem our industry faces and I cannot tell you just how many comments I have read from carers having left one company for another through their lack of morale only to find exactly the same problems under the surface of their new employer.

My Answer

In my eyes, to provide real tangible continuity their needs to be a massive focus on the lives of carers, from what they are payed, to the working patterns they have, to the benefits they don't have, the list goes on.

But at the same time there needs to be a stiffer approach to discipline and structure and ground floor staff management and the sheer lack of communication that exists in an industry that is based upon it.

In my view just from the structure side of it, we should have teams of a set size, use your hands, put the thumb of one hand to the side of the other hand and imagine the hand with the thumb touching the other hand is a hand full of thumbs, each touching another hand, right there you have five lines of communication attaching to another five lines of communication, each of solid structure. I am not saying that teams should only have five people in, with communication presently so poor the teams should probably have no less than ten in and no more than 20 in, but no more, and what is of pivotal importance is that the team leader needs to actively seek conversation with their team. If the structure is maintained by the right people, then compliance and standards will follow and those carers that need prompting and settling can be dealt with and team morale can be maintained and encouraged.

Serious effort should be made by Service Providers to adopt a model like this, I have been to enough meetings to realize that with morale at an all time low across this industry, they only turn into mosh pits and people leave with the 'same old, same old' attitude.

Of course to introduce and maintain a structure like this will take tooling and resources, and care team leaders will need to be given time, patience and of course financial recognition, but at the end of the day we would have a solid maintainable structure that we can work with no matter what company we work for.

Please note that at no point have I mentioned training, this is because now more than ever, training is not the issue here, training standards are higher than ever.
I say again the issues are communication and structure, confidence and morale, and standards and compliance.

Humanity

Just watched a film, 'Lars and the Real Girl', that leaves me pondering humanity and it's quaintness.

Every man and woman, is someones son or daughter, every single one off us all, all of us that are biological and exist, relate in some way to someone else (genealogy).

Relation, is the way in which we lead our lives, relating to people or reasons, situations, feelings and such, and thus added to genealogy, we are able to see that relativity is the key to life, maybe that is the crux of Einsteins 'Theory of Relativity', I shall have to read it.

Relativity is how we make judgement, to decide if someone is lying we relate to fact and possibilities, if we buy something we relate price to quality, functionality, design etc.., if we watch something on the TV, when we look at the guide we relate to our mood when choosing what to watch; to someone who has an opinion that is different to ours we relate to how we feel to the matter in relation to our own standards or experiences, this list is endless because we relate matter to subject, subject to topic etc..

When I watched the film, it left me humbled. Humbled by the thoughts of my loved ones and what I would do for them, and not just for my immediate relationships, but for those external relationships that I have.

How many times have your feelings (within yourself) changed over someone not giving you enough time (in your eyes) to decide on something or do something ?

When we care for someone, we need to take a holistic approach to care so that we can relate to that individual and their preferences and needs, and their understanding and acceptance, and more to that, their friends and family's preferences, needs, understanding and acceptance also.

Understanding someones diversity and accepting there equality has got to be the founding pillar of the holistic approach, ensuring that discrimination and victimization does not occur.

If you are going to do or not do something for someone, then think to yourself how it is going to affect that person in the way in which they feel, or the way in which they think, how it may or may not affect something that may or may not affect that person, and how it all makes you feel.

All care is collaborative, not just between a carer and an individual but to other carers, and professionals too, care is a team effort, no matter how you look at it, so being a team player is massively important, and frankly if you are to be a carer then it's something you should never stop working on, abuse occurs far too easily and   quickly.