Making a Connection

It has been a difficult week for me as a PA, one of my clients has gone from being vulnerable to being to being mentally ill. The work that I have been able to do with the client has allowed me to chip away and find out what is really going on with them.

The client is now getting additional support but it isn’t easy seeing them in a hospital. I am so glad that the local authority has agreed to allow me to support my client, we have made a connection, one that they have not made with others before me. This was pointed out to me when I visited them today and the Doctor said “So your the PA, your client has spoken lots about you. They really like you.”

A win is different for everyone, for me making a connection with someone who needs a friend is a huge win for me.

PA Training with relaxation and defense

Today our PAs enjoyed the opportunity to relax, share ideas, improve their knowledge around neurological and psychosis and learn how to defend themselves if the there ever came a need to do so.

The session started with a lesson in wellness yoga to help with calming yourself down and becoming more aware of your body and emotions. The PAs found the whole experience very enjoyable, even those a little skeptical at the start. They were then given the opportunity to explore the differences between neurological and psychosis to allow them to provide a better level of empathy and understanding to our clients who live with these conditions.

The afternoon offered a more active sessions as the basics of protection and defense was taught to our PAs. We were able offer an insight and increase the confidence of our PAs if they were ever to be placed in that kind of scenario.

We would like to thank those who took part and for those who took the sessions, it is important to use to give these tools to those who work so hard to offer our clients an amazing service.

PSHE reform welcomed by BTC

The Department for Education has today launched statutory guidance to accompany introduction of compulsory health education, relationships education and relationships and sex education (RSE) in 2020.

Breaking the Cycle have provided local schools with PSHE for a number of years and welcomes the new change. We feel that providing our children with a range of skills such as relationship building, online awareness and how to protect themselves is a key tool in this day and age.

The government announced compulsory health education last year along with relationships education in all primary schools and ‘relationships and sex education’ (RSE) in all secondary schools. The new guidance has been updated to reflect consultation on draft guidance late last year, and covers a range of issues relating to physical and mental health, wellbeing, safeguarding and healthy relationships.

PSHE (personal, social, health and economic) education is the vehicle through which schools deliver health, relationships and RSE education on the curriculum. Schools are now encouraged to begin updating their PSHE provision in order to be ready for 2020.

PSHE education also covers economic wellbeing and careers. With the emergence of issues such as online gambling and the urgent need to better-prepare young people for the world of work, the PSHE Association – the national body for PSHE – stresses the importance of covering PSHE in its entirety, even though these aspects are not yet compulsory.

For more information from the PSHE Association’s website please click here.

For more information on our PSHE provision please click here.

Self Management

Today has been a great day for me as a PA as I’ve seen one of my clients show amazing determination and self management. Whenever I take time off, be that over Christmas when the company has a shut down period or when I go away on a holiday I worry about my clients. So many of them rely on the routine that I provide and the stability of having someone able to prompt them to make good decisions or someone that they can bounce their ideas off of to allow them to judge what is a good decision.

I have recently come back from some time off to find one of my clients had decided to have some time off from their medication, something that lead the CPN, the doctors and myself to become worried about. There was lots of discussions about the possibility to readmit them to hospital, which would have been a blow to both them and myself as they had come so far.

However we are a humanistic company and work hard to empower and enable the client, and through some guidance and my desire to go above and beyond I was over joyed to see an increase in their medication consumption. It was, at first, a day here and a day there of morning or evening medication being taken but suddenly this became more consistent. Then they started to take both morning and evening and this week they have been able to, on their own, control their medication correctly.

This for some may seem over the top but for someone with extreme mental health this has been an amazing step back on track, something that makes me proud to be in this job.

Love Is In The Air

Valentines day can mean something different to many people. Some people love a home cooked meal to say I love you. Some people love a weekend away in the middle of nowhere so that they can focus on each other. Some people love that expensive piece of jewellery.

Just make sure that you are giving what you can and most of all giving it to someone that truly loves you more than the gift.

“Accidental Outlaw”

Today we worked with the years 8 pupils at Ratcliffe. We looked at young people’s rights and responsibilities whilst online and how different social media sites have different age restrictions.

We spoke about what you put online now may have an effect On later on in life. We all have a digital footprint that, even though we think it has been deleted does not mean that it has when it comes to the digital world.

The pupils came up with some amazing suggestions and ideas but showed a real lack of understanding of the legal implications around their online action. This digital world is a comfortable place to air your views but we all need to be aware that it is not somewhere where the law does not have jurisdiction.

Freelance PA/Support Worker Required

We are currently looking for people who are passionate about others. Our PA and Support workers provide a human centered approach to allow our clients to manage with day to day living.

Some of the Key Duties are as follows:-

• Promote, safeguard and protect the welfare of each service user, using social pedagogic framework – ensuring that they are at the centre of every contact/activity.
• Encourage choice in daily life and promote self-advocacy and/or advocate on the behalf of the service user.
• To enable service users to increase their capacity for independence and independent decision making.
• Accompanying service users in meetings with other agencies and healthcare professionals.
• Empower service users to maintain the cleanliness of their home and assist service users with daily tasks such as shopping, budgeting, making and preparing healthy meals etc.
• Social inclusion – empower service users to engage in meaningful activities which will broaden their social involvement with the local community if suitable.
• Monitor and maintain standards against agreed criteria and objectives and to implement quality assurance systems, which reflect agreed good practice.
• To assist service users to overcome any problems they might experience whilst participating in community activities, and to assist service users in developing an awareness of their locality/ local community.
• To report on any observed changes in mood or behaviour, health care needs or mental health care needs to BTC management as soon as possible.

We are looking to recruit people who are passionate about others as we continue to grow as a company.

For more information please click here.

Turning Point

This week I have spent my fair share of time at Turning point with several clients, to be honest it has been a while since I have been, and I was pleasantly surprised to see so much on offer. This will be something that I will be sharing with some of my clients because we often find that people just don’t go looking for it. Some of my clients would strongly benefit from some of the activities and as a personal development I will be spending more time researching what is currently on offer. This is something that we try to encourage as a company, developing ourselves, because it is the only way that we can continue to provide a service to be proud of. I can’t wait until March when our next set of training, it sounds very interesting.