Volunteers play an important role in supporting the Liaison and Diversion service, both in the community and in the custody suite. Volunteers provide variety to our service and, in return, experience with us enables them to get closer to their goals. One of our volunteers joined us as his goal was to change career and become a support worker. We are delighted that he has now been recruited to the
It’s like paying tax on having good health… … and paying tax isn’t always comfortable, but neither is having very poor health or being at risk of dying! I’ve been giving blood for a few years now and I’m about to give my eighth donation. As someone who was born in the NHS, had my children in NHS hospitals and who has been in a few scrapes in between I
May 28th 2018 is World Hunger day – a day designed to promote awareness of the simple and tragic fact that 800 Million people in the world do not have enough food to eat. The statistics are shocking. Have a read, digest the numbers involved and share with friends and colleagues..… http://www.foodaidfoundation.org/world-hunger-statistics.html The 28th is of course a bank holiday in the UK. Many of us will be taking time
My friend’s uncle has been displaying a lot of unusual behaviours which are totally out of character. He believes his daughter is his wife who passed away a few years ago. He does not recognise his family members’ true identity at all – he refers to his son as though it is his brother and his other daughter as though it is his sister. It is obviously a very difficult
Dementia is something we all need to be aware of at Touchstone as it can affect all of our lives. Although most of the service users who access Cromwell Mount do not have a Dementia diagnosis we recognise that not everyone displays the symptoms or disclose if they do. To ensure that we are in full support of anyone in this situation we are now well on our way to
You may be aware that in Touchstone we have Dementia Champions linked to our main sites. I am the Dementia Champion for Haslewood Drive offices and the Touchstone IAPT team where we offer treatment for people experiencing common mental health services, with a focus on patients from BAME and marginalised communities. We think about dementia in our decision making as it can present a lot like depression. It is estimated
I started working with adults with memory issues in 2016 and it was around that time I noticed changes in my Great Nan Rose. She had always been forgetful and other family members didn't notice the subtle changes but I did. It started with little things like getting people's names wrong. This wasn't uncommon as I come from a large family and there are a lot of names to remember;
Since 2015 Touchstone has been working hard to be a Dementia Friendly organisation. Through the leadership of the Dementia Champions group awareness around Dementia including some practical actions as enabled Touchstone to become more of a dementia friendly organisation. One of the key aims of the Dementia Champions is to ensure there is a consistent approach across all our sites and services. For example a Dementia Friendly Environmental Audit has
Touchstone is committed to becoming Dementia friendly, and in recent months we have been focusing on what changes we can make to make our sites easy for people with dementia to feel relaxed in. This has involved fitting new carpets and brightly coloured toilet seats, which can be helpful for people with dementia, as it is common for a person’s visual perception to be affected and similar coloured floors and
Touchstone staff and volunteers recently had the opportunity to hear the story of a gay asylum seeker from Uganda. To protect her identity, we have not included her name or photograph here. At the time that she was growing up in Uganda, people simply did not talk about being gay, because it could cost your life. She did at a young age confide in one of her family members, but