At Ashby House, we are always looking to improve our service and better our processes. We care about those who live at Ashby and want to use their opinion to help shape our future team. This is why we decided to ask our residents to get involved in our recruitment process – to help select the best candidates for our  current Support Worker vacancy.

Our resident Mel was excited to get involved in the process and give her opinion from the viewpoint of the residents in the home. She understands more than anyone the needs of the people living at Ashby House, and what makes a good support worker. Working alongside our manager  Sam, Mel took the views and opinions of her fellow residents and formulated them into questions that we incorporated into our interview process. Additionally, Mel asked some of our usual questions to potential candidates to gain an understanding of our interview process that she could share with her fellow residents. 

Not only did this process help our residents get to know potential new members of the team, but it also allowed the potential candidates during the interview to gain a better understanding of the type of people they will be working to support. Mel was able to communicate some of the needs and priorities of our residents far better than any of our recruitment team would. 

Including Mel in our process allowed us to better understand the issues that are most important to our residents, and the qualities that they look for in their ideal support worker. This, in turn, led to us being able to make better hiring decisions. Additionally, hearing what was important to Mel during this interview process allows us to better tailor our services in the home.

Our service users are the most important part of Godfrey Care, and it is important to us that they are happy with the care being provided to them. In the future, we aim to include them in more of our interviews– taking on board their opinions and bettering our future teams. 

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Godfrey Care is thrilled to announce that Ashby House has received a rating of ‘Good’ across the board from the Care Quality Commission.

The last two years have been extremely challenging for everyone , but especially those working in the care sector. Which makes the recent CQC inspection at Ashby House and the glowing feedback  and Good rating across all key lines of enquiry so much more meaningful to the whole team. 

The CQC spoke to relatives and had some great feedback, one relative told the CQC , “The care is excellent, staff have helped improve [Person’s name] independence, they walk to the shop with support and chose what they want, this was not the case before they lived here.” And another relative said “It is peace of mind for me and my family, I am not worried, I know they are safe and being looked after.”

The staff couldn’t be happier with the report, Team Leader Kerrie swift said “I am very proud to work with such amazing people who go above and beyond to make our service users happy. All our hard work is reflected in our CQC report.” Natalia Bloor, Team Leader “I was so pleased with our inspection. The report made me feel really proud of being part of this team. We are aiming for outstanding next time”

Ashby House Manager, Sam McMillan’s response to the report“ I feel very humbled to work with the team at Ashby House. I am a really lucky manager, I have inherited an amazing team who embraced and embedded all the ideas I had to improve the standard of care. This was evidenced throughout the recent CQC report and I can’t thank the team enough. I look forward to striving for excellence with their support, dedication and kindness”

To see the full report please click here

As the restrictions of Covid over the last 2 years ease off, we are keen to try and make up for lost opportunities that the service users have missed out on. The team at Ashby House got in contact with a local music group run by two volunteers Jim and Simon that attend the home on a weekly basis to have group music sessions, playing a variety of musical instruments and getting the service users involved with a variety of games. This has gone down really well with everyone and has become an activity that everyone really looks forward to. In addition to the opportunity to play with a variety of musical instruments, service users are given iPad’s to use with the aim of developing some basic computer skills in a fun and interactive way.

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Loretta Gallagher was nominated by the Team leaders as employee of the month. The nomination was made by the Team for going above and beyond for the service during the month of January.

The Team Leaders at Ashby House said that “Loretta always gets the job done, she is constantly on the go throughout her shift, she will stay over when other staff have other commitments and cover additional shifts to help the team, coming in on her days off to help wherever she can with things such as shopping”.

In addition to this Sam McMillan, Ashby House manager, tasked Loretta with two additional tasks. One was setting up a works communication group and manages this to ensure that important work related information is shared effectively with the wider team. The second was for Loretta to organise keyworkers for the service users in Ashby House using skills competencies and relationships as a basis to ensure that each service user had an input into this process too.