5
Peer Support for Staff in Donard House
Mick McCallan and Mark Kimmins
Residential staff don't adopt a zero tolerance approach and
are subjected to challenging behaviours. We understand that
challenging behaviour is often symptomatic of the trauma
experienced by the young people in our care.
It is important for staff to support one another and ensure
that this support and the reason for it is recorded.
Happier Staff = Better Service for Young People.
Why is this important to staff and young people?
Aim
Increase recording of immediate
Staff/Peer support following low
level incidents from 0% to 65% in
Donard House by October 2019
Development of immediate support recording system
Recognised the Culture of Care among colleagues
Helped staff focus on reasons for challenging behaviour
Staff feeling valued and enjoying work
Better engagement with Young People
Managers able to respond and be aware of low level
behaviours.
What has it achieved?
What are we doing and why?
Listening to the staff team shaped our aim.
We developed a recording document for staff to capture peer
support in order to measure change.
We considered heavy work load and no appetite for more
paperwork.
We placed posters in staff areas to prompt staff to complete
forms and offer peer support.
We encouraged staff to talk and not to carry issues into their
home life.
We provided paper copies of document and also placed on
shared folders (Not everyone using computers).
We provided encouragement of team participation through
team meetings and supervision.
PDSA Cycles
Throughout our journey we
had to define how to record
Peer Support. Staff took the
lead with this through a focus
group using numerous PDSA
Cycles.
The science of Quality Improvement can be applied to Social
Work
Have patience, change takes time
Importance of team participation at the early stages
All feedback generates learning which can effect change
The value of both Qualitative and Quantitative data.
Continue PDSA cycles
Spread to other Children's Homes
Changing Culture / Identify Champions
Heavy work load on Donard Staff
Impact of external factors - Organisational change.
Learning Next Steps and Challenges
Outcome Measures