People who receive social care services are beginning to think
hang on a sec
we should have a greater role to say
in how social care is shaped,
who's it for, and all those questions like that.
And for people like myself who use social care services I find it very difficult
to be told what I should and shouldn't have.
Choice and control matters for everyone and
it's only really sometimes that we notice it when it's not there.
Moving into a care home can be one of those instances where
choice and control over
the little things in your life that you don't notice
because it's part of the background
suddenly is disrupted
and those little things are the things
that really matter for people
so being able to decorate your own room having a
choice about when you have a cup of tea
and how you take your tea
when you get up in the morning
when you go to bed
taking time to get to know people and
what they used to do what they used to enjoy doing
and helping them retain that
sense of being able to make little choices that will affect their
environment in ways that help them to feel at home
is really important.
It means that I should be the one who should decide how
services that are available to me
should be organized and arranged
and designed around me.
That's what it basically means to me.
People think independence which is part
of that the concept of personalization
is about doing things for yourself
it's not, it's about being in control and
deciding things for yourself
so for example Yvonne put my trousers on
I can't put my trousers on
but that for me doesn't make me independent
if I can or can't -
what makes me independent is
I decide when, what color and how those trousers are put on for me.
We all want choice and we all want control and I think if we lose control
we become frustrated and frustration can lead us then to
lose the ability to take advantage of the opportunities
that are offered to us.
A lot of people see care homes as being God's waiting room
and they're not.
They are a new chapter and for a lot of people it's a new lease of life so it's letting
go and I say to people think about it is it an opportunity you don't have to
worry about shopping housework making your bed.
Fantastic - I'd love people to be waiting on me and looking after me.
Think of the opportunities that that provides us with
so although I might be losing control
over the control of a household
I'm actually getting more control over what
I can do with my life.
During my career I've seen a couple of really bad
examples where that choice and control has been taken away.
And as a result of
that the people involved have had really bad experiences
which can be upsetting
not just for the person themselves but for their families, their friends.
I've even seen examples where a person wasn't able to wear the clothes that they
wanted to wear
and to see somebody treated like that is really distressing.
We offer a 24/7 service and so if someone decides that they want to sleep
all day and be awake all night
then we can just work with them and support that.
We have people, residents who really won't get up before 10
or 11 o'clock in the morning and then they'd like to listen to music and then
they'll start to get ready for the day.
And it's very important that we work
with individuals not to try and break that
but it's their choice and we're
here to support them.
The challenge for people who are working
in care homes and managing care homes
is to try in different ways to make the experience for people
who are living there as close to that sense of it
being their own home as is possible.
For the time that they're there it needs to kind of
reflect who they are and what's important to them.