50 Voices
RACHEL 50 Voices captures the authentic voice of the people that use our services and our staff as Turning Point celebrates its 50th anniversary
50 Voices
Rachel Helliwell
50 Voices
Rachel Helliwell
Rachel Helliwell is a team leader and registered care home manager at Reevy Road Residential, a care home for adults with learning disabilities. Rachel transferred from the NHS to Turning Point in 2012; however, she has been working at Reevy Road since 2000.
What are your main responsibilities? I have many responsibilities, one of which is ensuring that the health, safety and wellbeing of the 24 people who live here are managed with care. We have a team of 54 who work at Reevy Road and I ensure that they are line managed appropriately and are complying with all regulations. Another responsibility of mine is to promote choice, independence, respect and dignity for all the people who live at Reevy Road. I continuously strive to push the service forward. Residential care in a large home can be seen as quite old fashioned. People should be supported to live in their own homes, in the community of their choice. This is why here at Bradford we are working on a transformation project. The project is about encouraging people we support to move on from our services. For example, we’ve already had two people move out of Reevy Road into their own homes.
I continuously strive to push the service forward.
50 Voices
Rachel Helliwell
What aspect of your job do you enjoy the most?
I know that the hard work and dedication does pay off.
I enjoy seeing lives being turned around. We’ve had quite a few new people move in recently from a nursing home that closed down. It’s fantastic to see how we’ve been able to support somebody to become more independent, whether it be learning new skills or providing residents with new opportunities, such as being able to go to college, secure a job and eventually move into a home of their own. This is what drives me forward in life and motivates me to come into work. I know that the hard work and dedication does pay off. When I was working at the NHS, I found that they managed risk out of their life. However, since Reevy Road has become part of Turning Point, we can manage risk into the lives of the people we support. For example, some of the residents at Reevy Road belong to a learning disability choir. They are fully booked for Christmas in Bradford. People want them to sing at their Christmas dinners and other Christmas events. It’s just fantastic. Two individuals who’d recently moved exhibited quite challenging behaviour; swearing and acting aggressively towards staff. Since they’ve moved in to Reevy Road, we’ve had virtually no incidents of that type of behaviour because they were given more choice and support. Residents were more active in the community and there’s a sense of belonging and presence. Also, some of the residents are part of the People’s Parliament; this is a service user forum. During this forum they express their opinions about how they would like Reevy Road to be run. They also tackle local issues and are actively challenging shops in Bradford because they’ve not been able to implement disable access. Another issue is that people are unable to use their learning disability bus pass before 9:30am. However, this is not useful for people who may have a medical appointment; for example, one of our service users recently moved into their own house and he has a job. How is he supposed to get to his job on time, if he can’t use his bus pass? Some members of the People’s Parliament went to the real House of Parliament and directly addressed this issue to the MPs, as well as informing them of the good work they have been doing in Bradford. This shows that people have been given the opportunity to voice their opinions where it matters.
50 Voices
Rachel Helliwell
What’s life like at your service? What attempts have you made to make it homely for service users?
No two days are ever the same; no two hours are ever the same.
Life at Reevy Road is very busy because we support many people. No two days are ever the same; no two hours are ever the same. There are always lots of medical appointments to attend. Some staff members accompany the people we support to attend day centres, and residents with complex health care needs receive one to one support. Reevy Road is regularly visited by health professionals who provide support with health tasks because we are a residential home and not a nursing care home. We do try and promote Reevy Road as the resident’s home. The home is split into three areas: one wing is for people with complex health care needs; another wing is for people who have autism and sensory impairment; the third area is for people with mild learning disability where they just need prompts to do daily tasks such as laundry, personal care, cooking and visiting families. We are very careful with the language that we use at Reevy Road. We promote people’s independence and choice. We don’t call the home a ‘unit’ or say ‘shop floor’. We try and keep the offices discreet and to a minimum, and we ensure that we do not have paper work or clinical items lying around. We have lots of pictures and personal effects displayed around the home. However, we are governed by the Infection Control, Health and Safety, CQC and health care standards, so we do have procedures in place to ensure that we comply within the legislation.
50 Voices
Rachel Helliwell
We promote people’s independence and choice.
Reevy Road recently participated in a bathroom competition and this was one of the ways that we’ve tried to make the place more homely and less clinical. The competition was organised by the Bradford team, Lorelei Jarvis, the area manager initiated the competition. One of the challenges that we faced when participating in the competition was to ensure that everyone’s needs were met. This is because the bathrooms for the residents with complex health care needs are different to the suite for autism. People with autism don’t like a lot of things out or bright colours, so everything needs to be calm and serene. We have a service user meeting every month and the bathroom competition was discussed. We’d talked about what residents would like and some people wanted to be involved, helping staff to purchase paint and other bits and pieces they wanted in the home. The competition prize is £50 and we’re still waiting for the results.
50 Voices
Turning Point Standon House 21 Mansell Street London E1 8AA 020 7481 7600 info@turning-point.co.uk
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