There are a lot of care provision companies operating in the market, however providing a top value package with a real care focus at the centre are much harder to find.
To illustrate this, we recently received an unsolicited e mail testimonial from a friend of our client who was heavily involved in trying to help her resolve some severe issues initially.
The client had recently moved into the Wokingham area. She found it very hard to meet new people due to her autism, being very nervous and needing a lot of support. Eventually, she was befriended by the writer who added “she couldn’t speak to me at first, but after I talked gently to her, keeping a safe distance, she became calmer, and we were able to have a good initial conversation. We have built on that over the months, so that now she is quite relaxed with me”.
During the first two months of moving into the area we were advised by the writer that “her care was very patchy, with lots of gaps, and sometimes with inexperienced, young carers who didn’t know how to care for someone with autism and behaved inappropriately”; “there were many times that the client was left on her own in the day and at night, and because of the trauma she has suffered in the past, she dissociated and ran away, sometimes miles away, or fell down the stairs and hurt herself. I saw her on several of those occasions when she had been found wandering, lost and very scared and brought back by the Police, cold, wet and distraught. She lost a lot of weight because she was too anxious to eat, and when she had care, most of the time was taken up in dealing with the aftermath of being lost and dissociated”.
Then due to a change in social worker, Gabriel’s Angels then took over her care. This was a “transformation” moment in the words of the writer, and she went to say “it felt as though you were all willing to learn what was helpful for her, and she felt you were listening to her, which was so important. She knows what she needs and when she feels comfortable with people she can express her needs articulately. The biggest difference was that she was getting the 24/7 care which she had been promised from the beginning”.
“I want to express my gratitude to Gabriel’s Angels for taking on the challenge of working with her with her autism and complex needs and making such a difference to her life and happiness. She really needs this to continue in the long term; she has so much to give back to society, if only she has the support to enable her to do so”.
The key points to emphasise here is that without the Gabriel’s Angels ethos of family and care which is at the core of the values that the company hold dear, providing the needed levels of care and support to the client is paramount. There can be too much focus on the cost of care provision rather than what the client really needs to enjoy a happy and fulfilled life – yes, cost is an important factor – but the key focus must be on the quality of the help and support that is provided!