# Transcript

Interviewer
Hello Natalie, what context do you work in? Is your employer a statutory, voluntary or private organisation, and does your organisation work with professionals working in other sectors?
Natalie
So I work in a statutory service, and I work with professionals from within the health service also, and working in a statutory service means that it’s a requirement I am working within legislation and guided by Welsh government.
Interviewer
Are there any codes of conduct or practice that you need to meet?
Natalie
Yes, there’s the Code of Professional Practice, and you have to remain mindful of the principles within that Code of Practice and make sure that you’re sticking within that framework.
Interviewer
Are there any particular aspects of the Code that are important to you?
Natalie
For me it’s always about being open and transparent and making sure that people have the information that they need, also thinking about how I represent myself and making sure that I represent myself in a way that gives the public trust really.
Interviewer
And what about you, Robyn?
Robyn
The Garth Care Services is a private, family-run business. We are only a small business; we are not a big company. However, we have a mix from our clients, so we have local authority clients and we have privately funded clients, so obviously those clients pay for the care themselves. In the community side of the Garth, we have a mix, so we have some private, some local authority funded clients so local authority funded is through, it can either be the hospice so St Michael’s Hospice sometimes fund our clients or it can be CQC, so that’s the Care Quality Commission, which is Herefordshire and Powys borders, so they will then pay for their care. I work alongside obviously the GPs and the district nurses, which are obviously the NHS, and obviously we’re regulated and registered with the CQC, which is the Care Quality Commission.
Interviewer
Thank you, Robyn. Can you describe the ways in which you are held accountable for the quality of your work?
Robyn
Firstly, I am accountable not only for my own quality of care that I provide, but for all my junior staff who I manage. To ensure that they are providing high standards of care, I do monthly quality assurance to promote the standards of care so I do things like monthly spot checks, auditing concerns, complaints, compliments – I deal with all of those, and our value statement at the Garth is putting life into days and not days into life, so everyone knows that sort of value and that is our sort of aim, to put life into days not days into life. So it’s basically to ensure that our clients are getting the best possible outcome of their care with us. I also attend appraisals with my manager and I hold appraisals for the staff who I manage, so appraisals are really good. So it gives them the opportunity to raise any concerns or complaints or any issues that they have, but also I can then feed back to them any issues that have come up with their care and their standards of care.
Life is all about risks and risk-taking, and as a carer we should promote positive risk-taking where it is safe to do so. So we have a client for example, in the community, who takes risks – which again we may not like, but it is their right to do so. So I can give an example. We’ve got a young man who wears a pendant alarm, which is obviously – it’s an emergency alarm so if anything happens they press it and an ambulance comes. So he wears it during the day, but at night he puts it in the drawer, so he can’t access it at night, and this gentleman is obviously at high risk of epileptic fits. So obviously I’ve spoken to him and said you really should be wearing it in bed, but he refuses to and he’s got full mental capacity, you know, that’s his right to take that risk.
Interviewer
Thank you, Robyn. What about you, Natalie?
Natalie
There’s lots of ways I think that you can be held accountable. I guess that you are there to support and protect individuals and their families and you should be looking for feedback from them on that process. You’re guided by Codes of Practice legislation policies and procedures. You make a commitment to continue to develop professionally and providing evidence for that to reregister and within supervision you need to be able to be open to constructive feedback and to talk about areas where you may need to develop and concentrate on. When you complete an assessment or care plan or you write something for Court, you need to be evidence-based. You need to be able to justify the decisions that you’ve made within your written work and really just using feedback to develop yourself as a practitioner and continue to evolve and grow as you gain in experience really.
Interviewer
Are there any other professionals or organisations that you work with, Robyn?
Robyn
So I work closely with adult social care, so social care workers for our clients. So I will talk to them, they will create a support plan, and I will liaise with them over emails or via the phone. I will obviously refer clients to the occupational therapists for Herefordshire if I feel they need equipment in the property. We also have an in-house physio – so our residents in the Garth are very lucky, we have a physiotherapist who works with us at the Garth, so she’s in there three days a week, so they can get physio provided for them while they live here, which is excellent.
Interviewer
In your role, are you part of a network with other people such as informal carers? How does this work?
Natalie
Yes, so I work quite closely with occupational therapists, with nurses, with the third sector, so voluntary organisations with social care workers, domiciliary carers and care homes. So, the carers within those care homes and care home managers. So I have really positive relationships with the third sector and I feel I know who to talk to when I need to find support within the community for an individual, and that really helps me to support individuals and their families.
Interviewer
What are your thoughts, Robyn?
Robyn
We work alongside many professional bodies such as the GPs, district nurses and occupational therapists. We have a client in the community who has physio weekly, and we liaise with them with the ever-changing equipment to move him as he is actually improving since his brain injury three years ago, so obviously I’m in good contact with his physios.
We also have a gentleman who had a stroke and it affected his speech. So he has a speech therapist weekly, and I liaise with them around techniques to assist him to improve his speech. Another client we have has a private carer during the day, and we assist her during the night, so we keep in contact with her with regards what to do with that client and how things are going.
We don’t have a network as such, but we stay in touch via telephone, emails or meet face to face at the clients’ homes with regards to other professional bodies. With regards to informal carers, obviously we come across family members, friends and not just private carers. So we will work closely with them or listen to them – they usually have good advice and techniques, and they know the client really well, so any added information for that client so they can get the best out of their care is essential really. We promote person-centred care, so having them on board and working with us is really, really vital in promoting their care needs and making sure they get the best quality of care from us.
Interviewer
That’s great. Thank you, Robyn. Thank you, Natalie.