>>Jill: We do a variety of things, we administer Marks meds several times a day, we do Marks
passive movements which relaxes his muscle which stops his muscles from seizing up. We
do his PC (Personal Care) shower, shave, clean his teeth, but it’s not all physical sometimes
we have a laugh we have a joke we go out to shows we go out, we do whatever everyone else
does, but we do it together.
>>Cheryl: So when I first came Mark was spent most of the day in bed, short breaks in his
chair, the farthest he would go out was maybe to the shop for a quick walk. Mark was quite
down, he wouldn’t communicate much, and it was long days of watching TV and building
trust up with Mark. His body used to be very very tense and he’s relaxed a lot now. Mark
would communicated with you now and he will answer and he has a massive input into his
own life which I how it should be and he wasn’t doing that originally it was all medical,
there was no social aspect or mental health aspect to him.
>>Frank: When we in rehabilitation place he was basically in a room on his own, with nobody.
He was always down, he was either ill with a cough or he just didn’t want to associate
anything with anyone, I think he felt he was never going to get out of this depression,
and that made us depressed because all they wanted to was give him anti-depressants and
we didn’t want that because we didn’t really think he needed it.
>>Michelle: So we decided to bring Mark home we a traditional …. Care agency, I kind
of wouldn’t even know where to begin with the trauma that, that caused my whole family
let alone the trauma that it caused Mark.
>>Christie: – It was a very worrying time and worrying for Mark because we never knew
they were coming or if they would come, A couple of times they didn’t come.
>>Michelle: we’d get people through the door that didn’t know anything about his
medication, didn’t know how to use the peg machine, cause they didn’t know him they
weren’t able to spot infections early meaning he gets really poorly but can’t tell anybody.
Also Marks skin broke down because of inconsistent personal care, so everybody wanted to do it
in a different way instead of standardising things, so you would just generally go in
there and find that Mark stayed in bed most of the time and they would be sat on the side
of him in chair watching TV that they wanted to watch.
We knew that the whole process needed
to be personalised from start to finish, so from the advert they we wrote right through
to the questions we asked in the interview, Mark had to be at the centre of the whole
process, we was doing it on his behalf. So we advertised in the local newspaper and we
advertised on social media, the local job centre, we asked people for a real personalised
letter, we asked for them to write, who they are, what they could bring to the role and
the response we had was pretty amazing really.
>>Frank: they are not all from the caring industry neither they come from quite a varied
array of trades and industry’s they were in before, which is what we wanted, we didn’t
want them all from the same industry because we wanted to train them ourselves to personalise
the plan for Mark and it works, it really does work.
Michelle – Because of Mark’s personal health budget and having the consistency of
the PA’s and the trusting relationship that they have built with Mark, Mark feels safe
with them he understands that if he gets poorly they will spot it really soon. So what we
have been able to do is use the budget in creative ways.
>>Cheryl: Personal health budgets has been able to provide training so that we can give
mark his physiotherapy, if he is tense we can stretch him, it enable us to be able to
put his splints on which keep his hands and his feet in a stable position instead of it
deteriorating. The training for the iGear is provided by the health budget has opened
a whole window of communication and from somebody that has zero communication like Mark that
is massive. It helps Mark tell us when he is in pain, if he is uncomfortable, or if
he is hungry. It opens things like helping him with his continence he gets to choose
where he wants to go. Now Marks social life is second to none, he is at concerts he is
on the Liverpool eye, he is in museums, he is constantly out, he’s very rarely in bed.
>>Jill: well physically, he has improved, his muscle tone is a lot stronger he has bulked
up, his health is a lot better, hair, teeth, skin, his whole demeanour as well as mentally,
physically he is getting stronger, which is brilliant because it makes me think ‘’we
if he has done this in 12 months where are we going to be next year’’
>>Michelle: Personal health budget has enabled for us to connect and have some real fun and
quality time together. We don’t really cry much, we just laugh and that so important
for somebody like Mark who has always lived life laughing.
>>Cheryl: it’s just been so freeing, freeing for us and freeing for him. He has got his
independence we have got our independence yet we have got our life together which is
lovely.