Things I Appreciate About My Current Care Home and the Care I Get

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I tend to lean towards pessimism about life in general and my care is no exception. However, I do feel that there are definitely positives about my current care home and the care I get. This evening, I’m struggling a bit with mistrust. It’s sometimes hard to realize that my staff truly want the best for me, but they do. For this reason, I’m using this post as an opportunity to share the things I appreciate about my care home and the care I receive.

1. My room. When moving here from the intensive support home, I was cautioned that my living space would be much smaller here. It is, but this I see as a positive rather than a negative. I only have one room as opposed to a separate living room and bedroom, but this means I can actually find all my belongings in one place. My room is large enough for all my stuff and this was something I hadn’t expected.

2. The lawn/yard adjacent to my room. I have a little terrace that I have a table and two chairs on, as well as a large lawn. I share it with the resident in the room next door, but she doesn’t use it at all.

3. The fact that I could choose the color for one of my walls. Okay, they didn’t have my favorite color, lilac, but I can’t see it anyway and my spouse, who can, thinks pink is much better.

4. My one-on-one support. It’s not perfect, but it’s as good as can be given the current circumstances. I have enough time for day activities.

5. The fact that staff don’t push me to be more independent than I can be. I had a pretty bad experience with this at the intensive support home. For example, staff would ask me why I was independent enough to climb over my fence during an outburst but not independent enough to tell the shampoo and shower gel apart when showering. As if these two are in any way similar! And even if they were, I’m autistic and struggle massively with executive dysfunction, as well as my energy level varying significantly from day to day.

6. The fact that the female support coordinator makes most decisions for me rather than the male one even though she is actually responsible for the other side of the home. I have had some issues with the male one, who isn’t the most socially adept, and I’m so glad they were able to make a working arrangement.

7. The fact that I get female staff for my personal care all the time. I’ve always made it very clear that I don’t feel comfortable with males helping me with this. However, at the intensive support home, I was often told I either could accept the male staff or figure out a way to do said task independently, even when there were female staff available.

8. The fact that staff have agreed not to assign me unfamiliar temp workers unless absolutely necessary. At least, that’s how most staff have explained it to me. The male support coordinator corrected me when I said I’m happy that as a general rule I won’t get unfamiliar temp workers, so now I’m not sure whether I was too optimistic. It’s still early days too, but I’m trying to be grateful.

9. My two assigned staff. Both are female, one being in her sixties and quite experienced and the other a young student staff who however has a lot of knowledge. They both have my best interest in mind.

10. My signaling plan. A signaling plan is a plan that details the various phases of alertness or emotional stability in order for everyone to help the client prevent emotional outbursts or other states of over- or under-alertness. My support coordinator at the intensive support home had herself changed mine without my knowledge or consent. Thankfully, I was able to retrieve the one I had in Raalte and we were able to build a new plan based off that.

11. The fact that, if I have concerns, I can E-mail my assigned staff and support coordinator and they’ll take my concerns seriously.

12. The fact that my fellow clients are a lot less disruptive than the ones at the intensive support home. I still experience overload from the sounds my fellow residents make at times, but it’s manageable.

13. The fact that I won’t be kicked out of here. I’m not entirely convinced of this yet – no, scratch that, I’m not convinced of it at all -, but at least so far my staff are saying they’re happy I’m here.

I’m linking this post up with Thursday Thirteen.

21 thoughts on “Things I Appreciate About My Current Care Home and the Care I Get”

  1. Those are definitely good things. And sometimes it’s good to focus on the good things around you, especially when many things aren’t going so well. (Harder to do than say, of course.)

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    1. Thanks for your kind words. I agree, it’s easier to say that we should focus on the positives than to actually do it. In the same way, it was relatively easy for me to write this list, but to actually feel grateful is something entirely different.

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  3. It is good that you have found so many positives! The smaller space does sound like a good thing and the little terrace too. It sounds like you have some great support. It is totally understandable that you would want the female staff to do your personal care, I would want that too!

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    1. Thanks for your kind comment. Re the female staff for personal care, I think part of the reason for the lack of understanding at the intensive support home was the fact that I said I’d try to do it on my own if no female staff were available, so they reasoned I could really do it independently if just pushed hard enough. In other words, they were seeing my request for female staff as entitlement rather than seeing the fact that I was saying that if no female is available I’d try to do it on my own as me accommodating to their situation. This means I’m all the happier that my current home does recognize my need. I, thankfully, can do some personal care tasks on my own when absolutely necessary, but it costs me a lot of energy. This was something the intensive support home staff didn’t realize and, when I pointed it out, it was me being “negative”.

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  4. Welcome to Thursday Thirteen! This is a wonderful list. I hope things work out for you and I’m glad you have found a supportive environment. I sincerely hope it continues beyond the “honeymoon” period that I, at least, tend to experience with new relationships or places.

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    1. Thank you. To clarify, I’ve been living in my current care home for over a year, so I don’t think the term “honeymoon” applies. The latest positive change to my care, ie. the agreement about no unfamiliar temp workers, was recent, but I do hope that as my staff see how I do a lot better with this, they’ll at least try their best to keep it this way.

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  7. What is most important is feeling safe and happy, no matter where we live, if in a car home or nursing home we need people around us who are supportive and do not put us down in any way shape or form.. So I was very happy to read your positive experiences. I hope life is treating you good for the most part

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  9. I enjoyed this post. It gave me insights to what’s good and not so good about life in a care home. I especially love that you got to choose the color of your wall. When I was a kid, Sonny and Cher used to sing a song called “It’s the Little Things,”and now that’s running through my head. It is the little things that mean a lot! They can change your outlook 360º.

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