David Stickley is the Responsible Individual for Guys Cross and Tracey Stickley is the Care Home Manager; both are qualified nurses with many years experience of working within specialist residential mental health care. As sole owners and managers of Guys Cross they are able to invest in the areas that they feel are essential to ensure excellent care delivery this is why they have placed particular emphasis on staff recruitment, retention and training.
Guys Cross has a very established staff team that has steadily grown over the years. Guys Cross is in the very unusual position of being able to state that they have never employed agency staff.
Alongside David and Tracey there are four unit managers; all Unit Managers are registered nurses level 1 nurses (RMN) who are also highly trained and and experienced nurses.
The Unit Managers have a team of staff working with them; each unit has a Senior Staff Nurse, Senior Support Worker and Care Assistants
All Care Assistants are trained to a minimum of NVQ level 2. with most attaining level 3. The Senior Support Workers are trained to NVQ level 3 or equivalent.
All staff undertake a comprehensive in house training schedule that is revised each year. The training schedule includes all mandatory training plus amongst other things:
- Understanding and knowledge of mental health needs.
- Recognition of signs and symptoms of mental health deterioration.
- Recovery focussed interaction / interventions.
- Crisis intervention training.
- Equality
- Non-toleration of abuse / safeguarding.
- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
- Human Givens Therapy
Our staffing Ratios are VERY high, in fact they are higher than most acute wards.
Research would indicate that the staffing level on an NHS Acute Ward would be 1 member of staff to every 5.5 patients (often these would be bank or agency staff)
At Guys Cross we have much higher staffing levels:
Avon Unit: 8 residents = 1:2
Rainsbrook Unit: 6 residents = 1:2
Leam: 9 residents = 1:3
Sherbourne: 9 residents = 1:3
These high staffing levels ensure that we are able to meet the residents needs safely and effectively and allow us to engage in daily meaningful activity.
