Another Anniversary!
It seems like yesterday when we printed up the fifth anniversary commemorative edition of the B&T. Well, another year has gone by since then, and as of October 1st, Supported Lives had been providing services within Bradford for six years. The new economic climate has brought a feeling of sobriety to many of the services in Bradford both in the Public and the Voluntary and Private sectors. People are worried. Will they have jobs? Will they have services? These are very real concerns and time will tell how things will pan out. Meanwhile we remain confident that we have provided a good service here at Supported Lives for the past six years and live with hope. The company continues to grow steadily and there is no shortage of referrals at the moment.
Thank you to all clients, families, staff members, colleagues and friends who have offered us support in this time. May we journey together for many years to come.
John Drury
Congratulations
Congratulations to Michelle on the birth of Joseph, and also
to father Schowey and brother Robert.
Sponsored Walk
On Sunday 29 August, Craig and myself
did a sponsored walk on behalf of the Bradford Down Syndrome Training
and Support Services.
We walked about 20 miles from Skipton to Shipley in blustery weather conditions, but luckily no rain, especially as when we caught the train it was bucketing down, which looked set in for the day!
In all the walk took us 5¾ hours, including a drink break just past Silsden, lunch at Five Rise Locks, Bingley, and me taking photographs.
Neil
Lives being supported by Supported Lives
Welcome to third annual celebrity supplement! The pictures below show some of the activities that our clients have been involved in over the last few months.
Ben thinks the motorised trolleys are the best thing about
B&Q!
Darren often asks to go out for a walk in the park and then loves to
spend most of it on the swing!
James and Ian on holiday in Grange-over-Sands
When Maxine was moving house she made sure she got the whole support
team along to help!
Andy and Simon at Simon's birthday party
Heather and Fran outside Simon's birthday party
Richard at the Bronte Vintage Gathering in May
Roy always enjoys a trip to the ice cream parlour
Mark, Michael, Michelle and Brett had a glorious day out in
Bridlington this summer. (Accompanied by Joseph, who was just a bump
at this time!)
Craig on the sponsored walk featured in this issue.
Students
"My name is Farayi Dube, I am a
second year Social Work student at Bradford University and I am one of
the three students doing practice learning at Supported Lives. I am a
father of two lovely sons and one beautiful daughter.
I also do part time work as a carer of older people. I enjoy helping other people to do what they want in their lives and I get great satisfaction from seeing them meet their needs.
On Saturdays, I usually take my two boys to the countryside for a walk and on Sundays we go to church as a family.
I am looking forward to my placement and I hope this experience will help me to enable people to achieve greater things in their lives."
"Hello, my name is Jenny. I’m one of the three new social work students from Bradford University on placement with Supported Lives until March. I’m starting my second year and I was thrilled when I heard I was going to be on placement with Supported Lives. I’m looking forward to working along with the client advisory group and getting involved with some support work.
The light of my life is my little boy Finley! He’s 6 months old now and still wakes up every three hours for a feed. In my spare time I’ve just recently started to learn to play the clarinet with my little sister. Be glad I’m not your neighbour!!!"
"Hi, my name is Gabriel Mutamiri. I am one of the social work students on placement. I feel so privilege to be doing my placement at Supported Lives, it's a great company and the staff are fantastic."
Rotas
The new database-backed system of producing weekly rotas will be active from November. The system is designed to avoid such things as accidentally assigning the same member of staff to two clients at the same time. It will also make it easier for team leaders to incorporate temporary changes to rotas and to find staff to fill in for staff who are sick.
Team Leaders and Senior Support Workers are currently familiarising themselves with the system and putting it through its final tests.
Unless there are any disasters all rotas from 8 November onwards will be produced using the new system. The only changes you should see are a slight change in the look of the rotas and fewer mistakes!
I realise however that there could be one or two problems that have slipped through and won't show up until the system goes live. I'd appreciate your forbearance at the start. If you would point out any problems as soon as possible it would help a lot.
Brett
Celebrity Chef: Matthew Waite
Matthew has only recently
joined Supported Lives but it was clear early on that he enjoyed
cooking so I told him about a Ministry of Food course that was running
in Bradford and he decided he would like to go to it. On our first
week there Matthew was shown how to cook a Salmon Tikka and he is
passing on the recipe.
The ingredients:
plain yoghurt, coriander, cucumber, fresh chilli, lemon juice, plain
naan bread, tikka paste and a salmon fillet.
Firstly, finely chop the coriander leaves and chilli placing these into the plain yoghurt. Peel the cucumber and de-seed it and again finely chop this and add it to the yoghurt with the lemon juice, giving it a good stir.
Take the salmon fillet,
cut it into 3 pieces leaving the skin on and coat both sides in the
tikka paste. Put the naan bread into the oven to warm while dry frying
the salmon for a few minutes on each side. Once done, remove it from
the pan and place it on top of the naan bread and then pour over the
yoghurt dressing and top with a few coriander leaves.
I'm not a fan of salmon but
I have to say that this was a very nice meal and was very quick and
easy to make. I'm not sure which of us is looking more forward to
going to this next time as we both enjoyed it so much.
Simon and Matthew
Community Cafes
Here is a list of all the community cafes in the Bradford and Airedale areas. Basically, community cafes have been set up with the assistance of the Local Authority. They are set up to provide a welcome for all who visit and should charge quite reasonable prices.
It would be great to hear from clients, families and staff as to how good (or otherwise!) you find them. Then we can let everyone else know!
Community Cafes
Cafe West, Wanstead Crescent, Allerton. 01274 488 499
Tree House Cafe, Great Horton Road Bradford. 01274 732 354
Cellar Cafe, Fairfield Rd, Shipley. 01274 586 474
Mary Seacole Centre, Park Road. 01274 391 147
Windhill Community Centre, Hall Lane, Shipley. 01274 588 831
The Arc, Arum Street, Canterbury Estate, Bradford. 01274 437 214
Baildon Methodist Church. 01274 581 128
Kirkgate Community Centre, Kirkgate, Shipley. 01274 757 133
Gateway, Ravenscliffe. 01274 636 602
Thornbury Community Centre, Thornbury. 01274 777 890
Rockwell Community Centre, Thorpe Edge. 01274 615 300
Coffee Pot, Buttershaw Christian Centre, Buttershaw. 01274 690 262
John Drury
Re-registration
Following our change in company registration last year (to Supported Lives Services Ltd) we have had to re-register with the Care Quality Commission under the name of Supported Lives Services Ltd. All social care agencies such as ours have had to re-register as part of changes to the law governing such work, (Health and Social Care Act 2008, since you ask!) from October 1st 2010.
This shouldn't mean too much change (if any) but the company is now registered as Supported Lives Services Ltd, trading as Supported Lives. We have now 'lost' the three stars for excellence as these were phased out by CQC in June, although we're still permitted to use them in our information for the next few months to a year at least, as the information should still be available on the CQC website.
It's an ongoing process of registration, and I have to say feels like duplication of the worst kind in order to fulfil a petty bureaucratic requirement, but that's just me being Mr Angry 'cos my hand hurts from filling in all the forms!
Jon Wright
Dentists
I met recently with Paula Smith who is the local NHS promoter of Oral Hygiene. She is keen to find any clients with learning disabilities or Autistic spectrum disorder who presently don't have a dentist and consequently whose teeth/oral hygiene may not be as good as it might be. They have asked for referrals to come through us.
If all the community dentists are any thing like the one in Keighley, then I would highly recommend this service. Contact the office if this affects you and we'll put a referral in on your behalf.
John Drury
