Choice Lifestyles

Resident summer holiday plans underway:

As part of the care package at Albion House, residents are offered the opportunity of a summer holiday. At our most recent residents forum in February discussions have began to decide this year’s chosen venue. Presently residents are torn between a relaxing sun soaking vacation to Devon or a more activity based holiday at an activity camp such as Butlins…. Watch this space…. we will keep you posted!!!!

Resident representative chosen.

In line with national guidelines Albion House is committed to ensuring residents are empowered within the home for which they live. As a result a resident representative has recently been appointed and last week attended their first staff meeting. Feedback from both staff and residents is that this seems to be very encouraging and worthwhile and is something that is planned to continue.

Summary of case study 1

Sharon was a resident in Albion House for over a year. For Sharon to move on to more independent living, it was important to educate her to self medicate.
Albion House have in place an in house self medication programme for clients who are ready to move on to independent living.
Sharon was chosen to complete this self-medication programme as she was moving to a flat in the community. The programme consisted of a six week assessment. Prior to the assessment Sharon was given the self medication policy and had to sign a self medication consent form. Now Sharon has moved on to independent accommodation and is managing her medication well with minimal support and supervision.

Summary of case study 2

David was admitted to Albion House with a history of aggressive behaviour associated with alcohol. We successfully initiated David to engage in a therapeutic work scheme within the home following a person centred assessment and discussion of his positive interests. We identified his skills and accordingly a risk assessment was undertaken. His tasks were to maintain the garden (weeding, watering the plants, and lawn mowing).
He has successfully engaged in this programme for the past three months and as a result there have been no further episodes of violence or aggression or any reported incidents of consumption of alcohol in the Home. The feedback we have received from his community social worker is that his progress is a story of success.

Case Studies:

Case Study 1:

Mr A was admitted to Bromley Rd Hospital from a psychiatric intensive care unit (PICU) having become unwell at his previous hospital placement in the community where he caused severe damage to property and was extremely threatening / intimidating to staff.
Prior to this Mr A had spent 3 years in medium secure mental health services and was regarded as a dangerous person to others when unwell.
Mr A has been on several medication regimes over the years including Clozapine which was stopped due to concerns over his White Blood Cell count.
He has a long standing history of cannabis use for which when he chooses to use can make his mental state extremely unpredictable and the risk of violence increase as the result of paranoid thoughts.
On admission to Bromley Rd Hospital a successful rapport and trusting relationship was built between Mr A and the multi disciplinary team which allowed for Mr A to give consent for a retrial of Clozapine to be commenced. With regular review of Mr A’s mental state and augmentation with other medications Mr A was successfully placed on Clozapine. This then allowed for Mr A’s capacity and concentration to improve resulting in successful access to psychology services and in particular therapeutic work which could be accomplished with our social inclusion workers.
Mr A on his own accord no longer wishes to use cannabis although should this change the initiation of Clozapine will help increase his tolerance of relapse.
In addition Mr A has completed a hearing voices trainer course and can now lead courses for others on the management of hearing voices (something he is extremely proud of).
Mr A has recently been discharged to residential care and is living his life semi independently for the first time in almost 20 years.

Case Study 2:

Patient X is a lady in her early 50s who has borderline learning disability in addition to schizophrenia.

She was transferred to Bromley Rd from a local NHS rehabilitation ward who were finding her extremely difficult to manage following numerous assaults on staff and unpredictable behaviour.

On assessment of Patient X, conscious attempts were made by clinical staff to ensure a working relationship was already established prior to her admission. This was deemed particularly important as to allow Ms X the opportunity of moving to Bromley Rd Hospital with a fresh start for which she could put her past reputation behind her and focus on the future.
Whilst there were some behavioural problems on admission (as was to be expected) with some threats made by Patient X to staff – no actual assaults were made. Positive feedback was therefore regularly given to Patient X via her meetings with psychology, nursing staff and via clinical ward round.

Great efforts were made to ensure staff had a good rapport with Patient X’s family (mother and father) who Patient X was extremely loving and caring towards. This relationship was supported in the form of leave being given gradually until eventually Patient X was going home for weekends unescorted.

Patient X was also introduced to college where she attended courses in Maths and English and for which she seemed to gain great satisfaction and a sense of belonging within the community.

A befriending service was accessed via the WISH project in London Bridge which Patient X made great use of regularly going out to places like the cinema and local theatre.

Ms X also attended ISIS (an Afro Caribbean centre) local to Bromley Rd Hospital which supported further many of Patient X’s needs including the freedom to leave hospital and have a sense of acceptance elsewhere.

After 18 months in our care Patient X was made informal for the first time in 14 years and was discharged to residential care 6 months later.

Choice Lifestyles FC

As part of our active lifestyle campaign, Choice Lifestyles London (Bromley Road Hospital and Albion House Residential Service) have a 5 a side football team which consists of staff and clients who play in a local 5 a side league

We are very proud of finishing league runner up in 2010 and hope to go one better than this in our 2011 campaign

We are currently looking for teams to give us friendly matches in order to ‘dust off the cob webs’ before we begin our new season in the forthcoming months

Anyone interested in arranging a friendly match should contact Gary Stobbs on 0208 695 6051

Bromley Road Residents’ Christmas Festivities

The Christmas festivities at Bromley Road started early with generous helpings of turkey and Christmas pudding at a local restaurant on 21st December. The punch flowed freely (non-alcoholic) and there were plenty of Christmas crackers, decorations and party hats. Residents continued in the party mood on Christmas Eve with lots of games and nibbles. The party was made more special with the fun of chopping logs and horse racing on our new Nintendo Wii, not to mention the use of our new karaoke machine, (with renditions of Dolly Parton’s ‘9 to 5’ and much more). Christmas day was spent in a relaxed atmosphere with plenty to eat and drink and residents were particularly pleased with their presents that staff had chosen to reflect their interests and personalities. Everyone had a great time and the residents thanked the staff at Bromley Road for organising events on their behalf.

Occupational Therapy Service

Following the appointment of our new occupational therapist. The new Occupational Therapy activities are progressing well. A revised timetable has been introduced offering swimming groups, cinema trips, creative writing and outings to local parks. These have been successfully running alongside the already beneficial and well established groups. Other activities are also being developed to ensure the continuation of our person-centred approach.

The response to the revised timetable has been positive and encouraging. Specialist groups in understanding the Mental Health Act, diabetes management, medication awareness, smoking cessation, drug and alcohol issues and general healthy lifestyle guidance will be introduced in the coming months. The Occupational Therapist will be carrying out individual assessments and sessions with patients identified by the multidisciplinary team.

The Occupational Therapist is developing links with local healthcare providers and community and charitable services to benefit the residents. The staff at Bromley Road are enthusiastic to continue building on the success of the developing programme.

Childs Tour of Little Acorns

Little Acorns School Highlights of the Year!

We’ve had an exciting as well as hard working year. Our curriculum theme from September to December was “shelters”, with all our National Curriculum subjects contributing to it. It included making shelters, visiting a synagogue to find out about the Festival of Shelters and a Harvest Celebration, visiting the Imperial War Museum and going in the Air Raid Shelter experience as well as the usual Christmas festivities.

A real highlight was entering an art and photographic exhibition for local schools and winning all the prizes!

Our theme from January to March was “journeys” during which we had three cultural and language days based on Italy, Spain and France as well as a visit to “The Lion King” musical in London. We also had our usual events of “World Book Day” and our Spring Craft Day.

The summer months began with all our students taking their SAT’s exams, both compulsory and optional. Everyone managed to do all the tests and deserve to achieve good results rewarding their hard work.

Our theme for the rest of the year is “space”, which will culminate in a space fun day and summer concert at the end of term. However, before that we will visit the launch pad and cosmos exhibition at the Science Museum in London. The biggest highlight will be our school activities holiday at the beginning of July to Halls Green Adventure Centre, where everyone is looking forward to swimming, raft building, bush craft, zip wires, barbeques, walking and visiting a deer park.

Finally, one of the greatest highlights is the children achieving a prize at the end of each term for reaching their targets. Not everyone manages this every time, but there is now a healthy desire to reach targets and try to earn the most improved student of the term award.