Care organisation Aspire has praised its staff for adapting to lockdown to support people in Salford living with dementia, disabilities and learning disabilities.
The current coronavirus pandemic has meant that the Social Enterprise has had to be flexible in the way it supports its clients and staff.
Janet Tuohy, Chief Executive of Aspire, said:
“The flexibility of the workforce has had a really important part to play in how we offer support to our clients, and we could not thank them and praise them enough for how they have adapted.
“A big part of making sure that we can help others is making sure that we look after the wellbeing and mental health of our workforce, it is vital we all look after ourselves and each other. We maintain good communication with all our colleagues and our door is always open if anyone needs support or advice for themselves, a fellow colleague or on how they can best support a client through these unprecedented times.”
Aspire, which has its headquarters at Humphrey Booth Resource Centre, Swinton, has three Mental Health First Aider’s trained by MIND in Salford who are offering support to colleagues, and staff briefings are used to distribute information including sharing useful tips on mindfulness and 5 Steps to Mental Wellbeing.
Aspire has also signed up to `Time to Change’ as employers, which is a growing social movement working to change the way we all think and act about mental health problems.
Under normal circumstances, Aspire offers services including Supported Accommodation for people with Learning Disabilities and Day Services for people living with Dementia and those with a Learning Disability, along with Respite and Short Breaks, but all services have had to be suspended apart from Supported Accommodation.
But due to the flexibility of the workforce, services have been adapted including Aspire’s Poppy Day Centre, which normally provides a Day Service for people living with Dementia, meaning that families have a number of days respite each week. With its temporary closure, the team have been redeployed to the person’s home to help support the families and enable them to carry on doing what they did when the person was previously attending the day service.
Aspire’s Alexander House, which also provides day services for Older people, people with Disabilities and Learning Disabilities has adapted to have an outreach programme to visit the people they usually support in the day service at home to maintain continuity and offer respite to parents and families.
Janet added:
“Although services have had to be suspended from what we would normally be doing on a day-to-day basis, the flexibility of the team has meant that we have still been able to communicate and support clients in different ways so they remain in contact with someone that they know and trust.
“The key changes we have implemented shows the flexibility of our workforce and their commitment to ensuring continuity wherever possible for the most vulnerable of Salford residents.
“The people on the frontline are our most valuable asset and this crisis has illustrated how supporting them both physically and mentally is good practice in both a human and business sense.”
For more information on Aspire go to https://iamaspire.org.uk
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