I’m Alisha. I started working for Worcestershire Care Group at the beginning of September 2011, shortly after leaving school, as the business and administration apprentice. I attend College one day a week to achieve my NVQ Level 3 in business and admin.

I feel this had benefitted me far more than just working or attending college. This has helped me to gain skills to progress further, using the knowledge and support from both work and college and the understanding of a business environment.   

I work closely with office co-ordinator Marie on a day to day basis, who I have learnt a lot from.

My main duties are organising the training – helping with the systems, planning, managing and recording all aspects of the training which is offered to all staff. I record all compliments and attend and minutes meetings. I work on reception 1 day a week meeting and greeting and dealing with telephone calls from clients and staff. I also help with updating the website.

Being an apprentice is a valuable experience as I am continually learning, taking on new and different challenges and enhancing my career prospects. It’s a fantastic opportunity which I would recommend to anyone

My name is Alex and I joined Worcestershire Care Group in March 2011 as the Accounts Apprentice.  I work in the Finance Department closely with Michelle, the Accounts & Payroll Manager.

My main duties are checking all the timesheets and calculating mileage claims as well as looking after the pool cars.  I also help with invoicing and produce many spreadsheets for various projects given to me by management.

I attend Redditch College once a week on a Thursday, to study for my Accountancy qualification. I really enjoy college and feel I am doing well. I am completing my level 2 AAT and hope to go on to do my level 3 and level 4. After that, I am striving towards becoming a management accountant.

Being an apprentice at Worcestershire Care Group, I have learnt a great deal of things that have helped and will continue to help me later on in my life. I have learnt how to work in an office environment, as I have never worked in one before, and am working on improving my time management and my organisational skills.  I have learnt a lot about finance and accountancy in college and at Worcestershire Care Group that has helped improve my working ability and I am sure that I can use all that I have learnt to get good positive grades in my exams.

I think there are a lot of positives about being an apprentice, such as: gaining experience at work; striving to gain qualifications; earning, which gives you incentive to work hard.

Being an apprentice gives you a starting point in your career choice.

We have recently held a 12 week Palliative Care Course for 24 of our staff.  This consisted of 4 modules which complements the Person Centred Support element of the Common Induction Standards.

Our staff have gained a great deal from attending this course and they now find themselves better equipped to support clients in remaining in their own homes at the end of their lives.

They appreciate the importance of client choice and meeting clients’ needs.  Our communication session covered methods of dealing with clients effectively, managing difficult situations and applying strategies when talking and listening to clients and their families.

The course included training on the treatment of pain and symptom control, pain relieving measures and the experience of pain from the client’s point of view.

Recognising and understanding the feelings associated with grief was also covered and this knowledge is used to support those suffering loss.

Our staff visited Hospices, Funeral Undertakers, Crematoriums and did case studies on the Hospice Movement, the Macmillan Service or the Marie Curie Home Cancer Service.  They also prepared a presentation.

If we can use the knowledge and experience gained to help you or your loved ones, please contact us on 01527 575904.

It is nearly March. Spring might be around the corner and we are gradually freeing up time to contine developing our staff. Most staff training stops in those difficult winter months so we can concentrate on coping with weather and flu difficulties.

So March has a full programme of training updates and a very exciting new training programme in Palliative Care. It is based on the MacMillian course “Foundations in Palliative Care”. We have tweaked it slightly to reflect domiciliary care. It is a twelve week course for one and a half hours per week. We have two groups of twelve staff going to undertake the course and a waiting list of ten staff ready for the next course we shall run.

Training is a very costly item of expenditure but brings with it great results in staff continuity and customer satisfaction. The CQC and local authority demand certain trainings which often means we are left with only a small budget to offer training such as the Palliative Care Course. So with our staff we split the cost; the company pay for all the resources and trainers, and the staff are coming in in their own time for the Palliative Care Course.

Full to overflowing Palliative Care Courses demonstrate that our staff take their jobs seriously, want to know how to do it right, and are willing to put themselves out to give excellent care. Need I say more? It is very humbling.

They say that everything is in the planning and this year we are glad we sat down in October and worked out a detailed action plan about what we are to do if and when it snows. We also thought how we could best plan to give our clients a good Christmas and our staff time off.

Putting all the admin and team leader’s brains together helped produce a plan that we put into action on that Saturday morning (18th December) when we were suddenly deluged with heavy snow falls.

Our most vulnerable clients were immediately identified and care was maintained by staff walking to them. Contact details of neighbours, family and friends were easily to hand so we could phone them to enlist their help when we could not get to the client ourselves.

This snow did not want to go away and was still on the ground 10 days later and Christmas was in the middle of this period.

Our staff did their own planning to make sure they could get to work. There were staff who walked miles during this period, staff who left their cars on main roads as their own roads were snow blocked so they could get out in the morning, and staffs’ families who dug them out so they could go to work or ferried them around to their calls to ease their load.

It was a splendid effort all round. Everyone played their part to ensure our clients were cared for and staff still enjoyed Christmas. We have all lived to tell the tale. It was a humbling experience to see such effort from all of our staff.

But we are all still watching the weather forecasts carefully so we maintain our preparedness. As the year closes we shall be sitting down and analysing what went well and what we could improve next time…..

Its is always a great pleasure to see our staff develop. This month has seen 24 staff start an NVQ 2. One new team leader is starting NVQ3; two other team leaders are undertaking the management induction standards, and two are starting an NVQ4 in care management. This comes on top of Hilary, our Registered Manager, starting a part time MBA at the University of Worcester last September.

The company sees itself as a learning organisation, that is learning and growing the things it does well and learning and changing the things it does not do so well. To be able to do this we need to have staff who are confident in their roles to take part. Getting qualifications helps them and causes a tremendous “buzz” and lots of entusiasm. I am really looking forward to seeing them succeed, which means that the clients will get the best care and the company will grow in competence.

Why are we keeping our compliments a secret? The company has always prided itself on giving good care and keeps a record of the compliments it receives. So from this moth we shall be pasting the current months compliments on the web so we can show you as well. You will find them under testimonials. Please take a look.

We spend a lot of time and effort (and money) helping our staff become the best home care assistants they can be. Its starts with an intensive induction where we give new staff all the skills and knowledge they need. The programme is always being fine-tuned to make it better. This month we have added in an inroduction to palliative care. this decision came out of the feed back we got from the staff. We have some free-lance trainers as well as all the management team who teach on the induction so that we can provide appropriate relevant training. We build on these skills through regular updates and further training for all our staff. This all goes to making our staff they best they can be to give the highest quality of care.

How do they do it? The Care Quality Commission has decided to forget our name change to Worcestershire Care Group in May 2001 and change it back to The Hall at Home! We don’t know why and don’t seem to be able to make them change it back. We have phoned CQC and were told we must email. We have done that and had a reply to say they will contact us withing the next 15 working days (i.e. at least 3 weeks). How could a business run like this?

We have spoken to our CQC inspector, Christine Potter (email:Christine.Potter@cqc.org.uk). She says she will talk to anyone who needs reassurance that we are the same organisation.

People searching the net would not find us registered with the CQC. We continue to have an excellent status with them. I don’t think I would give them an excellent score if I was asked!!!

Is it only 2 weeks ago we were battling in the snow to get to all our calls? What a time that was with all the staff working hard to ensure that all the clients got care and were safe.

The Office staff worked overtime trying to re-organise visits and rounds as roads were closed by the police as they were unsafe. And they had to fight the weather to get into work themselves. The care staff, if they could not drive due to the conditions, walked sometimes for 30 minutes to get to a call.

I can truly say our staff are wonderful and I am so proud of them for the efforts they put in over this time.

Well, what a joy. Amy won the “Newcomer to Care” Award in the Great West Midlands Care Awards. Amy is young and has overcome the clients predjudice against young staff. We need to have young blood in care. It is a growing industry and we need to tap into all types of staff to satisfy our very varied client base. We had a great night out at the Awards with staff from each staff group. Amy will now go to London in June next year to compete in the national awards. It is a real boost for all of us and what is amazing is that we have lots more staff of her calibre who we could have entered. Roll on next year when we can enter again. And I will let you know how Amy gets on.

Wow! Shortlisted in all 4 categories we entered in the Great West Midlands Care Awards. Last week we all had to attend interviews, and now it is in the lap of the gods to see if we win any. I know lots of other people think we are good; we get lots of compliments for our clients. But how will other professionals see us and how do we measure up to them? There is not a long wait to find out; we are to attend a great gala evening at the National Motorbike Museum on 10th October.

Amy, whom we entered into the newcomer to care category, and Harry, entered into the best home care assistant category, are both among our younger staff. Clients often say they are not keen on younger staff, but both Harry and Amy had brilliant commendations from clients to go with their submissions. So I am wondering what it is that some clients don’t like about younger staff? Is it maybe that the clients think they will not do the job so well? All our staff get the same training at the beginning of their employment to ensure they have the skills. No staff, of any age, are allowed to work alone until they have passed the competences to demonstrate those skills. So perhaps any of our staff, no matter what age, do the work well.

Michaela has been nominated in the trainers section. She is the training facilitator who makes sure those competences are met by new and existing staff. She helps and supports those who are trying to achieve them. And finally we entered the company as a whole. We are trying to demonstrate that our investment in training, planning for the future, learning from our mistakes and listening to clients will make us the West Midlands Best Care Organisation. We are keeping our fingers crossed!

Our Bromsgrove Team Leader is moving away from the area. Therefore we needed someone to replace her.

Team leading is such a difficult role. Sometimes they are stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to please clients, other staff and the management. So we wanted to get it right. We devised a scoring system that covered all the qualities and competances we wanted.

We advertised internally and got three candidates who were all experienced Home Care Assistants. We wanted to be fair to them all as we knew some better than others. And we had to deal with that problem that so often happens when you prmote someone who is really good at their present job; it doesn’t mean they will be good at their new job.

So it was decided to split the interview into two parts. One was a workshop where the candidates helped us write the Pandemic Flu plan, and the second a formal interview which might help to demonstrate the skills they had.

We decided on two Team Leaders instead of one, and are now busy planning an induction programme that fast helps them achieve their new tasks, and help us give a better service.

How is it that you think you have an original idea about developing the company only to find that everyone else is saying and thinking the same? In the last few months we have worked very hard to develop our Team Leaders so that they are running their own small organisations using head office services such as training and support as their resources. We think that this will give us better outcomes in better care and staff support.

Then the Registered Manager, Hilary Overington, and I went to a workshop at Warwick Business School on following research principles on world class standards on customer care and there it was. Research has shown “one of the great drivers of success is developing your Team Leaders”. Wow! Research has shown that we are trying to do the right thing. That made us feel goos and we were on the right track.

Then I read the report of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Demetia’s report “Prepare to care” on challenging the dementia skills gap (at present there are insufficient staff trained to care for and improve the quality of life for clients with Dementia). And, written large in its executive summary is, “Developing leaders with good generic management skills as well as good Dementia care skills are seen as an important solution”. We must be on the right course.

What really perplexes me is how did I come to think mine was an original thought. Had I read other documents, professional journals, unconscious of what they were saying or are we all in our reflective moods looking at similar situations?

I’m not spending any time on this problem. I want to run the best possible service to give the best possible care that people want and I shall use whatever resources are available to achieve that aim. I am just pleased that our thoughts on good services being based on good leadership are confirmed by these other researchers.

As those of you who have been receiving care from us for some time will know ”The Hall at Home” name was used to trade on the good reputation of The Hall Nursing Home which the company then owned. It has been eighteen months since the home was sold and the home care service has grown and changed. We now feel it is time to differentiate ourselves. So from 16 June 2009 we shall cease to use the name Hall at Home and only use

Worcestershire Care Group

Of course, this should make no difference to our clients, our staff or our contact information and the service we offer will stay the same. It is just the name that has changed.

As always, we want to provide you with the best care and support we can.

This has been exercising my brain a lot of late. In any service industry your reputation rests with your staff. Our staff (about 90) mainly work alone covering about two and half thousand visits a week. So how do we ensure that the care and support they give is of a high standard? And all the time the business is growing with new staff and clients. And we have realised that we don’t have sufficient staff skilled to oversee and give support to all the care staff engaged in giving care.

So Dawn, Stephen (the other Directors) and I have been addressing this issue. Our solution is to identify staff, mainly home care assistants, who would like to increase their role within the business.

We have identified some staff, and in the monthly newsletter we have also asked other staff to come forward, to undertake three new trainings we have devised. The first one is for skills mentors who will work with new staff to ensure that they are working to the required standard. The skills are often around small household chores we are required to undertake, washing up, emptying bins etc. If you receive home care, you will know how important these tasks are to the quality of your life.

Secondly we are going to train 6 experienced staff to undertake assessment of new clients and re-assess annually all our present clients. The training will concentrate on present need but we are mindful of the personalisation agenda that is fast coming on us when the Local Authorities will be giving to clients the funds to purchase the care they want rather than what is assessed they need. Our training will include preparation for this.

Finally, we are training new supervisors to support our staff. Skills for Care, the national development body for the social care workforce, has recently published a document ‘Providing Effective Supervision’ which we are using and will get the new supervisors to undertake the Unit of Competence.

None of this training is cheap but we hope the investment will keep our staff with us, our customers happy and complaints to the minimum.