Telford care homes grateful for support from team

The team, provided by Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust, has been working with Cartlidge House in Oakengates and Bennett House in Woodside, along with other care homes across Telford and Wrekin, over the last 18 months.

But members stepped up their support during the coronavirus pandemic to help staff and residents.

The team, commissioned by NHS Telford and Wrekin Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), is made up of community nurses and a physiotherapist – with a focus on helping to keep residents well and avoid hospital admissions that could have a negative impact on their long term health and wellbeing.

It offers education to care home staff, proactive care planning for residents and support for individuals to remain within their care homes, rather than in hospital, at the end of their lives.

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Kath Henness, care home operations manager at Cartlidge House, which is part of Accord Housing Association, said:  “The care home multi-disciplinary team (MDT) has provided us with support before and during the pandemic.

"This included clinical support and guidance, equipment sourcing, preparing anticipatory care plans and communications with medical professionals, as well as being available for information and advice.

"More recently, their collaborative approach has included support with reflective sessions with our care staff. These have been particularly valuable, providing support to all our staff within the service.

“The care home MDT facilitated these reflective sessions which provided our staff with the opportunity to talk about their recent experiences and learn effective techniques for managing these.”

Julie Roper, clinical lead for the care home MDT and rapid response, said: “Normally our work is very much about prevention but Covid-19 has meant that our team has had to step up the support we provide and react to the individual needs of each care home, their staff and residents.

“The way we have been working over the last three months has been quite different to normal circumstances and we have seen a lot of changes having to be made in a short space of time.

“At times, it has been quite difficult for some of the care homes, so the team have had to act quickly to help them to manage and help keep individuals in their own care homes where we can.”

Tracey Jones, deputy executive integrated care for the CCG, said: “The MDT care home team is an important part of our ongoing commitment to enabling people to be cared for within the community.

“I am really pleased for the team to hear about this recognition over the Covid period. Julie and her team are passionate about the high level of care they deliver to their patients.

“I’d like to thank the whole team and everyone across our local health and care system who continue to work incredibly hard through such challenging circumstances.”