Working In Care- Part 3

We had to deal with a wide range of challenging behaviours at Vincent House, from those clients who screamed, bit, scratched and generally behaved in all manner of different ways. We were trained in what was called Control and Restraint. Most of those members of staff who had been working there the longest had been trained in this, but those of us who were new had to go through quite a rigorous week's training to obtain a certificate which allowed us to use this technique in times when certain clients needed handling in a specific manner. We were also trained in what was called breakaway, which allowed us to deal with clients who could pull you hair, hold on to you etc etc. This was very useful and I had to use this on several occasions. The training was done in an old ward at Bromham Hospital. It took me two attempts before I gained my certificate.

I eventually had to leave Vincent House when I was hit quite severely by one particular client and have still got the scars of this incident, not physical, but two of my upper spinal discs have been damaged as a result and I was put off work for several months and then I had to resign. I eventually got a job working at Macintyre Care at Westoning in Hathaway House. This was a similar situation to Bromham Hospital in that the wooden accomodation had outgrown it's usefullness since they had been built in the late 1960's when Macintyre was set up and had by then got to the point where they were not safe for habitation, being fire hazards and it was decided to re-home the residents there into new homes in the same way as the residents had been who had lived in Bromham Hospital.

It must have been a real shock to some of them, if not all, as at Bromham Hospital most of the services were 'on-site,' with things like dentistry, sensory, etc were there within waling distance of their accommodation, and the residents lived on large wards with around ten people living in one large, communal ward, with meals served at set times. To suddenly live in a suburban setting, with no more than six other people, must have been an almighty culture shock. They would have their own rooms, and have to make decisions such as what to eat, what to wear and even what sort of wallpaper they would have in their rooms. Some had the option to actually choose what to eat and even when to eat the food, and go shopping for it.

Working In Care- Part 2

I have mentioned in an earlier post my time working in care (hence this post being labelled 'working in care- part 2).

I will discuss here the earlier stage of my carework career. 

I did some voluntary work for Macintyre care in the late '80's, at their school in Westoning, near Flitwick, Bedfordshire. I worked mainly in the workshops, supporting some of the residents, making masks, puppets etc and sometimes taking them out into the communtiy, for example, swimming. It seems amazing looking back that they didn't appear to run any sort of criminal checks, although they might have done a Police check on me (now superceded by C.R.B., Criminal Records Bureau).  I also did a job working in an old people's home to increase my income, at a home in Bedford called Hextle House in Linden Road, doing the odd weekend shift, so I had quite a bit of experience of care work,  so by the late 90's, having done a lot of industrial  temp work, I decided to get a full-time care job working with people with learning disabilities. I applied for several N.H.S. jobs, and in one particular week I had three job interviews, one for  the job of support worker at a home run my the N.H.S. in Merton Road in Bedford, another for the Sensory Department at Bromham Hospital and the last for a support worker role at Vincent House, which I eventually got. The interviews were held at Bromham Hospital, and as the interviews were over the same week I met several of the same people who interviewed me over the three days. I was sure I was going to get one of the jobs, but not the Vincent House job. Having got the job, I didn't immediately start work as the manager, had to attend her mother's funeral in Ireland so the induction for the job was delayed by around six weeks (this was in 1996). 

Vincent House is/was (I'm not certain whether it is still open.) an assessment and treatment unit for people with learning disabilities who presented extreme challenging behaviours. The house, which is on the outskirts of Bromham,  a village just outside Bedford and on the road to Northampton, had been shut down for refurbishment and some of the original staff were re-employed for the re-opening, but I joined just as they were taking on new staff members. Bromham Hospital had been the home of a quite large number of people with learning disabilities and this was about to close, with the residents being moved out of the hospital setting and into houses within the community around various villages and towns around Bedfordshire, under the government's 'Care In The Community' policy. I did quite a few shifts for the N.H.S. on their Carebank register as a sort of 'warm-up' for work at Vincent house and worked in several of those homes between Luton and North Bedfordshire which gave me quite a bit of experience. Most shifts began at around 7 a.m and ran until 2 p.m. and late shifts from 2-2.30 p.m. until around 9-10 p.m. So being in care you have to accept that you are going to have to work unsocial hours and also work weekends. At Vincent House we had also to do nights, which I found very difficult as I am a day sort of person. I will mention this more as I continue writing this.
We did eventually start the induction process, which ran for several weeks. It was a period spent at Twinwoods, which had formerly been Clapham Hospital, and now run as the headquarters for the learning disability department of what was then Bedfordshire and Luton N.H.S. Trust, who was my employer and ran not only Vincent House but all the other learning disabilities homes which had been opened to house the residents of Bromham Hospital which I have mentioned earlier was being closed down. The manor house had been used as the administrative centre for the N.H.S. learniing disabilities service and was where I went for my inital interview. There were several houses built for the learning disabilities department at The Glades, but the rest of the Bromham Hospital site was sold for housing and the mansion became a private dwelling. Vincent House was on the road running out of Bromham and around three miles from Bromham Hospital.
The purpose of Vincent House was for the assessment and treatment of clients of the learning diabilities service who presented challening behaviours that the staff in the homes couldn't cope with and where they used various techniques to try and deal with the behaviours, different medications and care procedures, then the clients were returned to their respective homes in the community.
Amongst my jobs was to be a key worker for a number of the clients in our care, looking after their day to day care, buying their clothes, reviewing their medication and generally building up a relationship with them so as to care for them successfully.