Over the last two months I've been working with residents, families and carers on a personal stories project we called 'Collected Short Stories' at a care home in south-west London. The home's manager and I will report the findings of this experience at the UK Dementia Congress in a couple of weeks.
It started earlier this year, when I ran three, half day REAL Communication workshops for staff at the home where they honed their empathising, listening and conversational skills, using Many Happy Returns 1940s cards as the key driver.
For this project, we assigned carers to a resident each, to find out about their early lives during their 'reminiscence bump' (ages 5 - 25/30, where people's most powerful memories reside).
The results were even better than we expected.
When staff who don't have English as their first language and have limited knowledge of British history speak with people some two or even three generations older, conversation can be very challenging and the resulting poor communication may be exacerbated by the older person's diminishing hearing, eyesight and sometimes speech or other physical or mental issues. But give the carers techniques for enquiring and listening and encourage them to find out about people's childhood and teen experiences and suddenly, other wonderful things start to happen.
Amongst an array of good outcomes was this: one resident lives in almost constant pain with her knees which are deeply arthritic. All walking is a struggle for her, between her sense of independence and continual gnawing pain. However, her assigned carer noted that when he encouraged her to talk about her happy memories from her youth and engaged with her better using the listening techniques he had learned, she told him unprompted that the otherwise ever-present pain "just went away". This knowledge encouraged him to continue to get to know her through the retelling of her life history and help provide some respite from the pain.
In building an autobiographical album of her life together, they have developed a more meaningful and connected bond that extends far beyond expected standards of care, right to the very centre of her – and his – well-being; physical and spiritual and emotional. Now that's what I call relationship-centred care.
'This is My Life' Album Workshops; REAL Communication Workshops and GREAT Workshops for children; are all part of what Many Happy Returns is doing to help care homes get better at what they do. If you would like to know more, please look here.
Image: Age Concern Cardiff
Over the last two months I've been working with residents, families and carers on a personal stories project we called 'Collected Short Stories' at a care home in south-west London. The home's manager and I will report the findings of this experience at the UK Dementia Congress in a couple of weeks.
It started earlier this year, when I ran three, half day REAL Communication workshops for staff at the home where they honed their empathising, listening and conversational skills, using Many Happy Returns 1940s cards as the key driver.
For this project, we assigned carers to a resident each, to find out about their early lives during their 'reminiscence bump' (ages 5 - 25/30, where people's most powerful memories reside).
The results were even better than we expected.
When staff who don't have English as their first language and have limited knowledge of British history speak with people some two or even three generations older, conversation can be very challenging and the resulting poor communication may be exacerbated by the older person's diminishing hearing, eyesight and sometimes speech or other physical or mental issues. But give the carers techniques for enquiring and listening and encourage them to find out about people's childhood and teen experiences and suddenly, other wonderful things start to happen.
Amongst an array of good outcomes was this: one resident lives in almost constant pain with her knees which are deeply arthritic. All walking is a struggle for her, between her sense of independence and continual gnawing pain. However, her assigned carer noted that when he encouraged her to talk about her happy memories from her youth and engaged with her better using the listening techniques he had learned, she told him unprompted that the otherwise ever-present pain "just went away". This knowledge encouraged him to continue to get to know her through the retelling of her life history and help provide some respite from the pain.
In building an autobiographical album of her life together, they have developed a more meaningful and connected bond that extends far beyond expected standards of care, right to the very centre of her – and his – well-being; physical and spiritual and emotional. Now that's what I call relationship-centred care.
'This is My Life' Album Workshops; REAL Communication Workshops and GREAT Workshops for children; are all part of what Many Happy Returns is doing to help care homes get better at what they do. If you would like to know more, please look here.
Image: Age Concern Cardiff