Read our exclusive interview with George Coxon – Director/Owner of Classic Care Homes Ltd and Chair of the Mental Health Nursing Association (MHNA).

Here at Care Charts UK, we are always interested in hearing about new initiatives that are helping people who are living with dementia and as such, we were delighted to find out more about a new initiative set up by George Coxon. As George explains;

“We are part of the social care world where, if we live long enough, we will be the beneficiaries of entertaining, stimulating, fun and safe 24/7 care. Our lives remain important no matter what our age or circumstances and our precious moments must be shared – it’s these moments that make us who we are.”

We recently interviewed George about this initiative; ‘10-in-10’ and how it’s already proving very successful in enhancing people’s lives.

10-in-10 is a new initiative. What exactly does it involve?

There are multiple jobs to be done by anyone working in a care home, so time is of the essence. It’s extremely important in such a busy environment to add value to the lives of our residents. Keeping them safe is obviously of the upmost importance, but it’s also vital to ensure that they have a meaningful life and to do that, it’s essential that we know well (and are known well by) those we look after. The project draws on work done by the Alzheimer’s Society in their ‘This is Me’ initiative and by you with your Remember-I’m-Me Care Charts but builds upon them further to create an ongoing series of conversations between staff and residents.

The concept is quite simple – both parties share 10 year periods of their respective lives in just 10 minutes. This makes it fun, focused and perfect for maximising time-limited situations, while capturing things we didn’t previously know about each other from the key periods of our lives, like the schools we went to, the dreams we had when we were very young, our early life friends and our favourite toys or holidays.

What was the key thinking behind the 10-in-10 initiative?

The 10-in-10 project enables us to get to know those staying with us in a focused way and in just a short period of time. It enables us to learn more about each other and ensure that we have some good-humoured, quality time. By breaking it into manageable modules we can quickly learn about  each other, capturing themes and past life moments that can then be used to assist in some of the many and varied events, occasions and celebrations  we have at Pottles Court. The initiative is highly focused on making the lives of those staying with us better, but it’s also a fun way for our staff to get to learn more about them too.

What makes this initiative different or unique?

The initiative itself is an adaptation of other ideas that I’m sure have been trialled, but by branding it with a quirky headline it achieves more focus. 10-in-10 requires a two-way exchange based on shared lives, which we believe is more beneficial than the tendency to only have a one-way dialogue. The outcomes will be part of the work we are doing with our local research colleagues and the embedding of what we describe as ‘discovery conversations’ in our care plan compilation creates an active and ‘live’ part of the life stories and life history work often seen in care homes

What has been the greatest revelation from the 10-in-10 sessions you have held?

It’s still quite early days for the initiative but we have already seen some really useful learning taking place. It’s been really powerful to hear the detail of recollections from the first 10 years of residents’ lives and this has enabled staff to get a greater sense of who they are as a person and who they were when they were in their prime. Sadly these realities are often not acknowledged in later life when we become more dependent and less able to convey the confidence and spontaneity we enjoyed in our youth. Another really useful benefit has been witnessing the levels of ability people have to articulate their stories revealing verbal skills and recall capacity that might not have appeared as apparently previously. We have been very sensitive of course in not pressuring people to remember distant memories and as expected, some do very well while others struggle a little – this is a useful part of the ongoing assessment of not just those with cognitive impairment and dementia, but also those with normal memory decline associated with growing older.

Has the initiative been easy to implement?

It’s been very easy – as with all things in life, making time is the biggest challenge so having an in-house initiative that is popular with and talked about by staff, and that forms part of supervisions has given it real status in the home.  It’s about hearts and minds, enthusiasm and embedding ideas as part of a home culture – leadership and followership as we like to see it. Ideas are for success and trying things like the ‘shared lives 10-in-10’ project is but one of many of our projects and initiatives.

To find out more about the 10-in-10 initiative, or to read about the other projects undertaken by Pottles Court, please visit http://www.pottles.co.uk or check out their blog.