Andy is a Clinical Practitioner who has worked in the Adult Social Care sector for over 20 years across the UK, with specialist experience working in large, national Providers, and small businesses with adults with Autism, Mental Health & Learning Disabilities across Residential, Supported Living, Domiciliary Care and Day services.
Andy holds Fellowships with the Royal Societies of Medicine, Public Health and the Arts, is a Registered Scientist with the UK Science Council and is a Board Certified Autism Specialist who is in training to become a Board Certified Behaviour Analyst.
Andy is a qualified Adult Trainer, a Member of the Charted Teaching College, and specialises in delivering training to staff in the areas of Autism, Learning Disability, Augmented Communication and Mental Health. Andy has a true passion for Positive Behaviour Support, teaching skills to staff to support adults with behaviours that challenge, with a core focus on human rights and improving the lives of people with complex needs.
Spring is here and the Easter holidays have just passed – and we certainly made the most of it at Godfrey Care in every single one of our residential homes. Our dedicated staff aim to make each holiday and occasion special for our residents and sometimes that means going the extra mile.
Over the Easter Holidays, one of our amazing staff members from Ashby House donned a giant fluffy white Easter bunny costume and hopped around all of our residential homes to meet with residents and spread some Easter cheer. Our residents spent some time in the garden with the Easter Bunny, surrounded by nature and springtime which was a great mood booster after a cold winter.
Our Easter bunny bounced around with an Easter basket fitted with colourful gift bags containing tasty chocolate egg treats for every single one of our residents to enjoy. It was great to see our residents laugh and smile at the Easter bunny and pose to get their photos taken with him, even our staff wanted to join in the fun!
At Godfrey Care, we want our residents to enjoy fun experiences they will cherish and be able to look back on with delight. We work hard to make sure that the people in our care get these experiences, whether it is visiting a park, having a pamper day, or celebrating annual holidays like Easter with the friendly Easter Bunny.
We take pride in the commitment shown by our teams to deliver high quality support to individuals we take care across all our homes and are always happy to receive recognition of this from families, professionals and the CQC. Station House was recently inspected by the CQC in an unannounced visit where the home received excellent feedback and recognition of all the hard work that the team have put in since its last inspection.
The inspector praised the relaxing and homely environment that they observed and how this was obviously reflected in how comfortable the residents were. The report highlighted that our staff clearly followed guidelines and regulations around ensuring the safety of those individuals that we care for. The team were also praised for their excellent understanding of each residents care plans and how their individual needs could be met.
The leadership of the home were commended on changes that they had implemented in a short period of time to ensure that there was a robust recruitment process, increased staff knowledge/training, robust procedures around medication and rigorous reporting procedures. As part of the CQC inspection families of individual’s who live at Station House were contacted for feedback and they commented “there is brilliant leadership. As a result, the staff seem happy and seem to enjoy working there”. External professionals who worked with the Station House team also praised the homely environment and the friendly and professional approach of the team at Station House.
All key lines of enquiry were rated as good and that is something that we are extremally proud of and wanted to thank the whole Station House team!
At Field House, we love to make sure that all of our service users not only feel supported and cared for but that they also feel special. Over the weekend, we held a pampering spa day to help our service users relax and unwind, even getting the staff involved in the fun!
All of our staff and service users got changed into some comfy matching PJs, the perfect thing to pull us all together and remind us that we are all part of the one big Field House Family! The PJs and slippers made our service users feel comfortable, at ease and ready to relax as we started our spa treatments.
The treatments included some sheet face masks that we placed over our faces to soothe and moisturise our skin. It’s lucky that we are close to Halloween, as these sheet masks made some of us look very scary! Next up, was our electronic foot spas where our service users could feel the warm water and bubbles underneath their feet for that extra bit of relaxation. To add to the pampering atmosphere, our spa goers were given a little glass of alcohol-free fizz while completing some more relaxing spa activities.
After we had relaxed and recuperated, we decided to have some fun and get our hands dirty with some Halloween pumpkin carving where we carved some scary monster faces on the side of our pumpkins while munching on some of our favourite snacks and enjoying each other company. To round off a totally fantastic day, we had a big hot party buffet packed with all of our service users’ favourite foods, this went down a treat.
As you can see from some of our photos, our service users had a wonderful time on their spa day and carving their pumpkins. At Field House, we always like to come up with a variety of activities for our service users to enjoy, building their skills and showing them that we care. Our staff, as usual, went above and beyond to make our service user’s day special and we couldn’t be prouder of them. If you have any ideas for activities or days that we could plan with our service users, let us know, we love to hear your ideas. Field House is here to help our service users, but also to let them get the most out of life and that includes having fun with friends. We look forward to our next activity day!
We love any reason to have a celebration at our homes and this year is no exception. Last month, we held an end of summer garden party with a fancy dress theme; after all, everyone loves to dress up! Our dedicated team of staff worked hard to put this together for our service users, ensuring that they enjoyed themselves while celebrating the end of the summer season. Our fantastic support worker Kirsty Owen worked hard to pull this all together, coming up with the idea, arranging the decorations and inviting service users from our other homes to Ashby House to come and join in with the fun.
We love to have opportunities for our service users to socialise, not only within their own homes but with our staff and service users from other homes in their area. After all, communication and connections lead to increased wellbeing for our service users. We also invited our service user’s friends and family to our special day to celebrate with us, allowing them to make precious memories with their loved ones.
As you can see from the photos, everyone had a wonderful time! Our team hired a huge colourful bouncy castle and inflatable slide for the garden which had party goers bouncing around for hours. All of our staff, service users and guests dressed up in different costumes and it was great to see what everyone was wearing; Kirsty and Natalia dressed up as local Greggs workers to help deliver some delicious sweet treats.
An amazing spread of food was put together with sandwiches, pastries and cakes for everyone to enjoy and music and laughter kept the party going all afternoon. Our service users had such a great time, and can’t stop talking about the fun they had. So much so, that we are already planning our next party!
