The staff team at Guys Cross utilised their many years of experience working within the mental health setting and in particular within a care home environment to develop a model of care that is entirely recovery focused and resident lead.
We looked at other models of recovery being used and found that none of them “fitted the needs” of the residents living at Guys Cross as well as we would like so we used the principles of recovery and developed our own model of recovery encompassing skills and knowledge from a variety of areas such as Human Givens Therapy and Person Centred care.
We started developing the model based on the principles of our philosophy that being;
We strongly believe that our role is to support people on their recovery journey.
As a specialist care provider with many years experience in this field we understand that everyone’s recovery journey is a personal process requiring an individually tailored package of care and support.
We provide a safe, modern, homely, therapeutic environment in which residents are empowered to develop self help skills and coping strategies to assist them on their recovery journey.
We hold the hope for each resident’s recovery even when they feel they may have lost hope for themselves.
To ensure the success of the Recovery Model we believe that it is vital that residents are fully involved in all aspects of assessing, planning and evaluating their care. The Guys Cross Recovery Model process starts by gaining an understanding of the individual’s strengths and areas they would like help. This is achieved by undertaking a variety of assessments with the first being Daily Living Assessments. These assessments form a base line assessment for practical skills such as cooking and using public transport.
The next stage of the assessment process is the completion of a Global Risk Assessment. This assessment looks at the individual as a whole i.e. their mental and physical health and any potential areas of risk.
Alongside these assessments we believe there are nine defined areas or “innate needs” in everyone’s life that need to be in balance for an individual to feel happy / fulfilled. If there is an imbalance and an individual is not happy in one area it can have a negative effect on other areas and may prevent the person from living their life to its maximum potential.
The innate needs assessment highlights areas in which they feel happy / fulfilled; it will also highlight any area in which they do not feel as happy / fulfilled these areas then can be worked on with the support of staff.
The results of all the assessments assist with the next part of the process which is scoring each area on the Recovery Assessment; this is a point of reference when the Recovery plan as a whole is reviewed and also serves as a visual aid of the progression of the resident’s recovery journey.
On a daily basis the resident is encouraged to write their thoughts in their Recovery Folder and a member of staff writes a daily summary that can be compared with the residents thoughts.
The complete Recovery Folder is fully reviewed at least annually.
At some points in the process there may be differences of opinion between the staff and the resident for example the resident may not feel that they are capable of cleaning their room but the staff believe that with the rights support and encouragement they would be. This sort of dispute will be negotiated using open and honest communication.
Sometimes the staff may identify an area of risk the resident does not see as a risk. The staff always maintain their duty of care and responsibility and will manage these risks by using open, honest care planning.
