Hello Nichola, what was your starting point with Thrive and where are you now?
We started with one child, George*, in Northumberland and we are now working with 23 children, and their families and carers, in their homes and communities. All our children are at a SEND [Special Educational Needs] school. We’re probably impacting close to 100 people every week, working with four local authorities.
What have been the best bits of the past 18 months?
Well, I’m proud of us growing and I’ve got a really good staff team – we’ve got 29 enabling support workers, mainly part-time. The Shaftesbury name is getting out there much more and we have a pretty steady flow of referrals coming in. But I think it’s the core work of setting the care packages up for parents and carers that makes me proudest. Because a lot of these parents and carers have waited sometimes up to two years for support, living with massive demands on their lives in trying to support their child with profound disabilities.
How do you create a care package for a child?
We go into the family home, we meet the parents, the carers and the children, and do an initial assessment and identify staff who might fit with this family. Then we do ‘shadow shifts’ where our staff shadow the parents and the carers, just for a short period of time, because the parents and carers know their children better than anyone, don’t they? No package is the same because every child and family is different.
The number of youngsters in the north east needing care placements is ‘significantly higher than the national average’
What does this look like in a child’s life?
We began to work with one teenager, Lee*, who had funding for four hours’ support per week. His conditions include profound learning disabilities and autism. All his medication had changed recently and he was displaying dysregulated behaviour. On top of this, he wasn’t in school, only going in about 10am and leaving about 11am. So I worked alongside the school and asked if our staff could go in and shadow school staff because school staff knew him really well. The school has been really accommodating and by shadowing, our team got to know Lee. That went on for a few months and got to the point where mam wouldn’t pick him up until about 12pm.
Then mam was happy if our staff picked up Lee at 12pm and took him out for lunch (because he couldn’t cope with lunch in school), and then they would take him straight back home. So, it’s slow and painstaking but our staff win the trust of both the child and the family and that way, change can happen. This went on for about eight months and it worked really well. His medication changed and he was thriving. And the fabulous side of this is – he’s now in school full-time.
I think in this case, working with all the other professionals going into the school was key, because Lee’s mam didn’t want the support in the house. Everyone’s different and she wanted to keep Lee’s support at school, totally separate from his life at home.
Were any other elements key in Lee’s progress?
I kept the same staff going in to school every week to keep it consistent, because Lee needed consistency. He had the same teaching team at school so we just modelled school. I think when you work together with other professionals, you get the best outcome for these children and young people.
What difference has this made to the family?
We’ve had regular meetings with Mam and Dad to see how everything was going. At our last meeting, they said they feel they’ve got their life back and they just couldn’t thank us enough. It had been really tough for them; in the past, sometimes mum would drop him off at 9.30am and she’d get a phone call at 10am. She would just sit round the corner in her car, waiting. His dad had always worked from home full-time, but I think mam is working part-time now.
And what changes have you seen in Lee?
Staff saw a massive improvement because he had his proper routine, which they’d built up gradually. It’s absolutely fantastic to see.
Last year when we talked, you said you wanted to make fun part of what the children experience, with some never having been to the beach, which is close by. Has that happened?
Yes, we’ve got quite a few to the beach and parks, and the Alan Shearer centre is really popular too. It has specialist accessible activities, a sensory pool and hydrotherapy pool for children and adults with disabilities. And we’ve got the Tim Lamb centre, with trampolines, soft play and animals. At Christmas, we took some of the children to see Fenwick department store’s windows, which is a big thing in the north-east. Some of these things are normally out of reach for children from poorer backgrounds, because of the travel costs. And we get great resources from the Shaftesbury activities coordinator, who sends out a lot of stuff for occasions like Halloween and Easter. These are particularly great for any children who are less able to go out as much. So if we couldn’t take them to say a pumpkin picking place, we would do it in their house.
What are your hopes for the next year or so, Nichola?
I want Thrive to keep growing because there is such a need for this support for children and young people.
Plans are still in place for a children’s home that would offer short respite breaks. We’re working closely with local authorities and other partners to move this forward, but a provision like this takes time and careful planning. We’re really keen to support as many young people as possible across the North East, as we know there’s a real need for a care provider that shares our values.
*name changed