Dan Mushens reflects on the need to embrace change within health and social care
Anyone who works in the health and social care sector will likely agree that the concept of change is ever present and reflection, reviewing, innovating and goal-setting are constant themes.
As an organisation, Penumbra started 2020 with the launch of new cloud based IT systems which will revolutionise not only our human resources and business administration departments but also the way in which we plan and deliver our day to day support to people across Scotland. The launch arrives at the end of the organisations five year strategic plan which itself will be reviewed with a new plan of action being announced later in the year.
Our own ARBD services here in Glasgow continue to evolve with our supported accommodation changing its purpose to become a twelve week assessment centre as opposed to a setting where residents previously stayed for two years to help stabilise their recovery. Our supported living service will also be faced with change when a re-tendering process begins later in the year.
At management level, we’ve recently said farewell to Alison and Mhairi, our support manager and assistant support manager respectively and have seen Kyle and Nicole fill the void. They have a wealth of social care and ARBD specific experience and provide enthusiasm, guidance and vision during these periods of transition.
Last month, both services were inspected by the care inspectorate and the staff team were delighted with our ‘very good’ and ‘excellent’ grades which we maintained from previous inspections.
Innovating and inspiring are important aspects of our service delivery and last year we were successful in securing funding from the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland. We’ve started devising an ARBD self-management toolkit to empower people with ARBD to live independently, so 2020 will be spent working towards completing this which will involve lots of stakeholder involvement.
We will also be continuing with goals we successfully worked towards last year and we’ll promote assistive technology to our supported people to help to help reduce possible harm from ARBD and alcohol misuse. We will also continue to support our peer volunteer in his role and encourage all the people we support to consider linking in with eachother. Nominating colleagues for award ceremonies to showcase the good practice our team deliver in their day to day endeavours is also something we’ll consider.
In addition we will still be using any opportunity to raise awareness of ARBD by promoting stories of recovery, hosting open days, using social media and working collaboratively with partner agencies whenever possible.
Dan Mushens is a recovery practitioner for Scottish mental health charity Penumbra and works in the alcohol related brain damage (ARBD) services in Glasgow. He can be found on twitter @danielmushens
