The REaCH Team provides a variety of short-term support to enable people to maintain their lives in their own homes.
Home Support Workers are an integral part of the REaCH team, providing care and support to individuals in the community.
Meet John
I am a home support worker and my role is to support people with personal care if needed, prepare meals and drinks and manage medication if required, and to help the service user to become as independent as possible in their own home, to give choices with respect and dignity. In my role I feed back to the office in a weekly review about how the service user is managing and progressing towards independence.
Part of my role is to observe daily routine and improve it if possible with permission to involve other health professionals if necessary again with permission.
I have had various roles in the service, I started in the neighbourhood team then moved onto the ECM team (enhanced Case Management) and now I’m working on the reablement team.
The best thing about my job is working with someone who is struggling for whatever reason and helping them get back to be as independent as possible.
Meet Caroline
I started working with REacH in November 2020. After working in a variety of care roles over the last 20years. I applied for the position as I had been looking for a role closer to home and came across the service on the council jobs website. I felt it would be something that would interest me as a varied and fast paced service focusing on reablement.
There are a variety of areas within REacH, active recovery, end of life and community. I have worked mainly on the Active recovery team on which you work alongside Physiotherapists, Occupational therapists and District nurses; encouraging the individual to return to base line through completing exercises and daily tasks (Personal care, meal prep, managing medication etc) in their own homes with prompting and encouragement until they have the strength and confidence to complete independently.
You are constantly assessing the individuals progress and feedback any progression or concerns to the relevant people involved in the individuals care plan.
It is very rewarding working with the REacH team it is a short term service so the individuals we support may only be with us for a short time but in that time you have an important role in enabling the individual to regain confidence after a fall for example and regain their independence.
The role is varied and at times demanding but very rewarding, the team are very supportive, you mainly work alone but there is always someone on the end of the phone to assist you with any concerns. I have recently been given a position with the customer lead advisory workers (Leads) so there is also opportunity for career development within the service.