Disraeli comes to mind

I was at a meeting recently when Disraeli was quoted. Benjamin Disraeli was twice Prime Minister (1868, 1874- 80) and is oft quoted. The quote that was used seemed particularly apposite to our recent experiences during the cold weather. The thrust of what he said was that what we anticipate seldom occurs and what we least expect generally happens.

In our organisation, probably like many others, we have developed over the past 6 months robust contingency plans in the event of an outbreak of swine flu. We have met monthly sometimes weekly developed a range of plans for different situations and most recently arranged for the vaccination of all our service users and staff. We believed we were as prepared as we could be. However the recent cold snap and resulting snow and ice did catch us by surprise; hence Disraeli. We will ensure next time that we do not run out of salt and grit next time. It could have been that the planning we did to ensure our services would continue in the event of staff shortages during the flu outbreak would have been required but it was not the case because our staff made it in through the snow and ice, setting off early to ensure that the services were well covered. It is a real credit to them.


Hilary Rowland
28.1.10

Parkhaven’s Christmas blog


As the year end approaches it is often a time of reflection and review. Social care has been in the news a lot over the past 12 months whether as a consequence of discussions about new ways of funding such services or because of the burgeoning numbers and interest in dementia care. The Trust approaches the New Year with great hope and optimism tinged with some anxiety about the consequences of forthcoming stringent financial times.

I have three hopes for the coming year. Firstly that social care services will receive adequate funding which enables charities like Parkhaven to provide excellent services to all; not just those with the ability to pay. Secondly that we are able to recruit the right calibre of staff; this is crucial to the delivery of high quality services and is of course dependent at least in part on the first hope, adequate funds, in order that staff can be paid reasonable wages which value their important contribution. Finally I hope that as an organisation we continue to be bold, innovative and sensitive and responsive to what the individual who uses the service really wants and needs. This should result in an array of bespoke services being provided so that they truly are personal.

I look forward to reporting on these developments in the coming year.

Happy Christmas to you all.


Hilary Rowland
Chief executive
21.12.09

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

A healthy development: growing patches

Last month Parkhaven Trust received planning permission for our revised extra care housing scheme which comprises 24 apartments. This is being developed in partnership with Arena Housing. It is a very exciting scheme which is part of our wider vision for the Trust of a health and social care park. Already the site has a GP surgery in the grounds, a nursery and a cricket pitch which is used by the local 3rd and 4th teams, and a one mile path which the local community can access. The extra care housing is another important piece of the jigsaw as are the growing patches for use by the local community.

This development is particularly timely and apposite. Firstly because of the demand for growing patches (allotments) and secondly because exercise and good diet are considered important in preventing dementia. Thus people from our local community can enjoy growing fresh fruit and vegetables, exercising whilst doing it and enjoying a healthy diet and thereby hopefully staving off the onset of dementia. Parkhaven Trust is determined to be at the forefront of new developments such as the extra care housing scheme for people with dementia, listening to and engaging with our local community as well as playing their part in prevention of a very debilitating disease.

Hilary Rowland
24.08.09

A swine flu story with a twist

It is several months since I updated the blog. It seems that there is something that is always taking precedence. It has been a busy few months, not surprisingly our focus of late has been on how we would manage an outbreak of swine flu in our services. A team from the Trust has been meeting regularly to put plans together and develop new policies that might be required. It seemed last week that our planning was going to be put to the test, when we apparently had two, then three, confirmed cases of the swine flu. The Trust put in to place all that we had planned and the team responsible for managing a possible outbreak of pandemic flu within the Trust met daily to monitor the situation. Crucial to us managing was that staff continued to attend, they did not let us down and despite being anxious they continued to come in to work. It was important that we had all the right equipment available for them: masks, gloves and aprons. Staff have also all been trained in infection control. We received excellent advice and support from our local PCT and health protection unit. A visit from the infection control nurse helped reassure staff. Because all our residents have their own rooms, and en suite, those who had the flu were nursed in their own rooms and the home remained open for visitors. Subsequently a few days later, after swabs were taken, it was found that our service users did not have swine flu but a more general viral infection which manifested similar symptoms. There is no doubt that this has been a worrying time for the residents concerned (all of whom are now getting better), their relatives and the staff and other residents of the home but we have learnt a lot from the experience. Inevitably someone will soon get the flu, in one of our homes, but we have learnt a lot and will be even better prepared as a consequence of what was in effect a dummy run.

Hilary Rowland

Worry, worry, worry

April 2009

As I write this I am not sure what I should be worrying about most as the chief executive of a small to medium sized charity. Should I be worrying about the global economic problems and how they are manifested here in the United Kingdom and in particular on the services that we are paid to deliver? Or should I be worrying about the possible impact of the pandemic flu and how it will affect our services and users and what actions we should be taking to prepare the Trust to reduce the impact as far as possible.

The issue about the global economic problems and how it is manifested here in Maghull is that pressures on the government, the bank bail outs, mean that there is less money for the public services. Clearly we are not public services as such. But the Local Authority does pay the Trust fees for people to access those services. The uplifts that we are receiving this year are very modest. The impact of this is that it limits what we can pay our staff. These staff are not paid highly, this therefore is a political issue. It needs political will to commit resources to pay a wage that truly values their contribution to ensuring that vulnerable and frail people are supported and cared for. Not paying a decent wage reflects on the priority that government affords such carers and service users they support, whether older people, people with dementia or people with physical and learning disabilities. The current economic climate serves only to exacerbate this situation.

In considering the other worry, it seems a fine line between being prepared but not generating panic amongst our staff and service users which can be debilitating and only serve to divert attention from constructive action. The Trust has convened our contingency team and will now be meeting on a weekly basis to plan and prepare so we are as ready as we can be to mitigate any impact on our services.
A challenging time for us all!

Hilary Rowland