Team Manager Jo Heathcote on how she and her team are still supporting during lockdown:
Here at Three Counties, we are doing all we can to ensure that it is ‘business as usual’ during these difficult and challenging times. As Team Manager, I am doing all I can to ensure that both my team and my carers continue to feel as supported as they always have, even though this has meant being quite inventive and clever with technology!! As a team, we have agreed to have weekly team meetings via video call. We have found that it is really beneficial and therapeutic to be able to see one another and talk through how we are all feeling and what is going on for everyone.
In terms of our carers, we are ensuring that we have at least weekly contact with them via telephone calls and video calls which enables us to talk with our carers and also to see our young people wherever possible and ensure that everyone is okay. We are having support groups via Zoom. Our first one was a great success and it was the general consensus of our carers that they would like to continue with these throughout the crisis on a fortnightly basis. We are also keeping in touch with our carers via our private Three Counties Facebook page where carers are sharing with us what they have been up to with the young people and sending us pictures of activities that they have completed.
I have been extremely impressed to see how well all of our carers and young people have been managing through this lockdown period and how people are all trying to make the very best that they can of such a difficult and unknown situation.
The overall message that I am trying to get across is that we are still very much here for everyone and that my ‘virtual’ door remains firmly wide open.