For the last few years, Kate and I have been involved in running sessions with Activity Coordinators from care settings all over the North East. We tend to demonstrate ways of using traditional and technological arts media and materials to engage and connect with older people, including people with dementia. These usually take place in museum spaces or conference halls etc but this time we invited them into our 'home' here at Northbourne. This session was framed around the residency and we wanted to draw them into conversation about the realities of engaging and working with people in care homes.
At the end of the morning we asked for feedback on our blog. It is hard to know what we should be sharing and what is interesting to read. They felt we should show how the residency is giving us opportunities to be more person-centred and spontaneous with residents. We talked about how to show this without too many pics of generic 'activity' and to focus on our journey and the way our practice and ideas shift, rather than only what we are doing with residents. There was the feeling that being introspective about how we were feeling (shy, overwhelmed, boiled alive!) would mirror aspects of the residents' experience. They were really interested in our opinions of the atmosphere and the day-to-day incidents in the care home and we speculated ways in which our perceptions would probably change over the weeks. Basically, people thought it was a great opportunity to open people's eyes to the amount of care needed to do the care staff's actual job, and the emotional, and physical skills needed to do the job.
'I don't think people know that affection, and showing love is part of the job.'
'I love the job - my son, who is four LOVES coming in with me and often asks, 'Mummy can I come and see your friends!' Which is gorgeous really but because I like coming in to work, my family don't really understand what I do, they think I just come in to sit and drink tea!'
