We hear lots of stories of how
connecting people with a sense of purpose
that can be really transformational for them.
Coming into a care home people may not assume that they
will be able to do things that
connect with their own values and who they are and what's important to them
but finding ways to be able to support people to do that
is a really important part of what
care homes should be doing.
Because everyone has something to contribute.
Identity and purpose are things that don't necessarily register as
top priorities for providing good care
but they are actually fundamental to
people having a really good experience when they come to live in a care home.
We know that people can experience a great sense of loss when they when they move.
A lot of that experience of loss is associated with not feeling
that they're able to be
the people who they were before they went in.
And homes can do an awful lot
to to redress that imbalance
by working over time to understand people
and what makes a difference in their lives
and helping them to to do the kind of things
to mix with the people who they want to mix with
to have the connections that they want to have
and to follow the interests that they want to follow.
Our approach starts at assessment so when we do our assessment we ask questions about
who people are what they did in their previous employments,
about family members,
then what we also do is ask families to provide us with some sort of
family history - where somebody was born, who their siblings were,
about a family tree, about important places in somebody's life so we build up a picture
we're going back to that you know da Vinci painting starts a bit of a sketch so that all
forms part of that sketch.
And that becomes quite important when somebody has dementia for example
because when somebody has dementia they
may go back to a person that they were 20, 30 years ago and if they start
talking about a place or a person that they had a relationship with,
a friendship with 20, 30 years ago, if we've got an idea about who that might be
through some information that we've gathered through our information gathering,
then we will be able to help that person.
In a previous care home
I had a gentleman who was a painter and decorator and we had an old shed
that needed painting so he went out with my handyman
and he and the handyman painted the shed.
Shed got painted on numerous occasions but it gave him a sense of
purpose, a sense of achievement when he saw the shed had been painted he was
exceptionally happy and that was lovely.
We had a lady once who - her dementia progressed
and she failed to recognize herself so she used to have arguments
with herself in front of a mirror and we had pictures of each resident on their
door so they recognized where their their room was and she ceased to
remember which was her room and it used to make her very frustrated
but she did
recognize herself in her wedding photograph when she was at 23 years old
and she recognized that as being her
so what we did was we took a photo shot of the
photograph of her, blew it up, put that on her door and she was happy.
One really good example of identity and purpose that I am aware of is a lady who used to
work as a manager of a cafe and when she moved into the care home
she was used to working and she's kind of worked beyond retirement
so she wasn't really interested in just doing activities and
sitting around watching telly and things
so she spoke to the manager and said
"What can I do that doesn't just involve joining in with the other activities?"
so he suggested that perhaps she'd become the
dining room manager
so now she meets and greets all the other residents for
breakfast, lunch and dinner, makes sure that they're all seated before she tucks in.
And then at the end of each meal she goes round and says "Oh did you enjoy
your meal? Is everything okay?" And then she actually -
I think she takes feedback back to the chef as well,
if anyone said we didn't enjoy that and
now she feels like she's really part of the family down there.
So it's also important to not make too many assumptions about what's important to
people based on what they might have done in the past.
People's sense of identity changes over time and
coming into a care home may shift that quite
significantly so it's important for staff to be able to have nuanced
conversations with people.
Another aspect of identity which is obviously really
important is people's sexual identity and people coming from LGBTQ communities
may have particular anxieties about moving into a care home and may be
concerned about what other people's views and prejudices might be
so having an open and honest discussion about that early on and helping people to explore
what the culture of a local home feels like is really important.