“Megan and I created Rainbow Day Services in 2014 but before that, and what seems like a lifetime ago now, we were two Healthcare Professionals in our early to ‘mid twenties who had a great sense of ‘What went wrong.’
Here we were, myself a Healthcare Manager specialising in Dementia and Megan an Occupational therapist specialising in activities, bounding into the Care Sector thinking we could make a difference and create joy and an abundance of happiness to every patient, client or relative we met.This didn’t happen. In actual fact we were lucky to spend 5 minutes a day with people who had been entrusted into our Care.
Now please don’t take me the wrong way, there are so many wonderful doctors, nurses and care assistants exhausting themselves day in day out to try and deliver the care they went into the sector to provide. It isn’t us that were the problem, it was the higher powers, the corporations and the budgets that were inflicted upon us. They can sell whatever picture or vision they like, but at the same time the likelihood of that being a reality was somewhat doubtful.
Surely there was more to my career than a £1.10 food budget per resident per day or one activity coordinator to look after 75 people? Surely there was more to this than 3 staff to 30 patients? Did I see Doris eat today? Did I make sure Mike had his glasses on? Did I leave the picture of Joans family facing her bed so she could see it as she went to sleep? No I didn’t. I didn’t have the time. These things that were so important to me never got a look in, because of the time constraints, the lack of staff and ultimately the corporation that didn’t let me. The corporation did not care about Joan, Mike or Doris and I felt like every day I was part of the system that failed them”…
To be continued…
