We salute our wonderful support workers on the 23rd November 2020!

Monday 23rd November 2020 is 'National Support Workers Day!' and we salute everyone of you. There are approximately 1.8 million support worker in England. This is made up of 315,000 NHS support staff (NHS Digital 2016) and 1.52 million in social care (Skills For Care, 2020). That's am astounding number of people who care for others as their job.

'As a Support Worker, you are in a rather unique position.....you may well be the person with the most regular access to the child or adult that you are working with. As a result of this regular access, you are likely to have a much more detailed insight into their life than any other professional and therefore a more sophisticated and accurate of their day-to-day reality' - Vetro

My grandmother, mum and I have had great roles as support workers - working with those needed help in their own home, people with dementia and those with learning disabilities. But our family have also received care from support workers over the last five decades. My father was in and out of hospital for thirty years due to Bueger's disease, my grandmother spent the last year of her life in a care home and I had a stroke and required a two week hospital stay. So my family stands with you and salutes you!

Here are some wonderful people doing the #atlasadventure

Andy!

I have been a support worker since 2009, 5 years in an acute mental health ward, another 5 years in an psychiatric intensive care unit and a year and counting in an learning disability unit. I have enjoyed working in all these different settings especially enjoying the engagement with service users and making a real difference to their life. Support workers are the front line and essential part of nursing as we spent the most time with service users as we observe, listen, engage, escort and do fun activities with them on a daily basis.

Becky!

I’ve been a support worker within the trust for almost 10 years now and still find the role presents our team frequently with new challenges. As soon as you think you may have witnessed most of the behaviours and needs, someone arrives with a totally new presentation and . The patients arrive distressed and unhappy, then leave us with a much improved mental state and hopefully a future that can bring a quality of life they deserve and I find that fulfilling. It is satisfying to know you have played a part in their journey.

Mohamed!

MY TIME AT ATLAS HOUSE AS A SUPPORT WORKER

I have been working at Atlas House for approximately three years now. Whilst working at this unit, I manage to achieve tremendous skills and experiences by working in partnership with other colleagues such as Nurses, Support Workers, Manager, Matron, OT, SALT and Psychology without forgetting the Patients.

Among my achievements of working as a support worker are;

· The opportunity to witness the life-changing journey that most of our patients went through from being dependent to being independent.

· The skill and knowledge of empowering our patients in making their own choices is also another of the achievement of working as Support Worker under this unit.

· My communication skill has increase due to the nature of my job as it involves interaction with multidisciplinary team members.

· Being a Support Worker gave me an opportunity to express my views at this unit for the wellbeing of our patients and seeing that those views are being acted upon

· Working as a Support Worker also provides a platform to develop my career pathway in Health Care settings.

My Time at Atlas House provides me an opportunity to develop and reflect on several factors among them are: While working at Atlas House

· I manage to learn how to use PBS in handling patients with challenging behaviour

· How to communicate using different strategies that are in place such as communication passport with patients with communication deficiency

· How to support patients in understanding their rights and have assessable information through easy read templates

· How to use my observation skills in identifying potential safeguarding issues around patients,

· How to report and documents any relevant information through Rio.

· How to engage patients using different activities available at our unit which our OT team has created for our patients wellbeing

All in all I believe being a Support Worker is mainly providing support towards patient’s care, their needs, respecting their choices, promoting their independence, providing person centred care approach towards each patient and make them feeling safe whilst they are under our care. My plan is not to remain Support Worker for the rest of my life as I am planning to develop myself further in other healthcare professional pathways.

Well there are three amazing stories and now its time to celebrate with a cup of tea and a slice of cake! #HappySupportWokersDay