Sisyphean tasks

Sisyphus was a king of Corinth who was punished by Hades for his misdeeds. His punishment comprised of having to roll a heavy stone up a hill; every time he approached the top, the stone escaped his grasp and rolled to the bottom.

Our Trust is currently involved in two seemingly Sisyphean tasks: one seasonal, the sweeping of leaves, the other, the recruitment of staff seemingly unending.

The Trust has the immense gift of land, swathes of beautiful parkland which is a joy to walk through at this time of year because of the autumnal colours on our well established trees. However if you are one of our gardeners having to keep on top of sweeping up the leaves, it must seem a somewhat Sisyphean task.

But so too is keeping all our services appropriately staffed. Our Trust employs over 175 people. It is one of the biggest employers in the area. But finding the right people with empathy, who are good listeners, who realise it can be the little things that make a difference to how someone feels and then to retain them is a real challenge. Turnover of over 25% indicates the scale of this task. No sooner than we think are fully staffed and ‘cracked it’ do people move on either to better paid jobs, to progress their careers or because they do not feel able to undertake some of the very personal care that is an integral part of a caring role. And as the myth goes the stone almost gets to the top of the hill and then rolls down again. We have just engaged in a successful recruitment drive. We hope that this time that those we have employed will stay with the Trust, enjoy their work, develop their skills and feel they are really doing something really worthwhile, so there will be one less Sisyphean task!

Hilary Rowland
29.10.09

What is excellence?
Parkhaven Trust provides homes for over 100 people: different homes for different people and different needs. There are currently 6 homes which are part of Parkhaven Trust. They all meet different needs. There is a small home for people with significant additional needs, another home in the community for people with learning disabilities, a specialist residential home for people with dementia and a nursing home generally for older people. What they all have in common is that they have been assessed by the regulator of health and social care, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) http://www.cqc.org.uk/ as excellent. Our Kyffin Taylor home for people with dementia has joined the ranks of our excellent services.
Currently in order to be assessed as a 3 star excellent service by CQC, the expectation of the service is ‘not for perfect services but for particularly good services, well managed and with a sustained track record of high performance’ (CSCI, QPM Document no 167/07). Interestingly they must have resorted to the dictionary for this description because it describes excellence as the ‘quality of excelling, or being exceptionally good’ (Collins English dictionary).
It is my belief that excellence needs to be constantly worked at. There is absolutely no room for let up and there is always room to do things better. In the experience of the service user everything we do is important. The Trust is launching a new strategy, CHOICES, in which we identify excellence as a crucial plank of what we want to achieve over the coming 5 years. Service users will be the test of whether we are successful in that endeavour over the coming years. But we are not resting on our laurels , a new service is just being developed. Work started last week on our next new project, an extra care housing scheme for older people. We will track its progress through this blog.
Hilary Rowland
8.10.09