Publish date: 4 January 2024
November's Employee of the Month winner is Carl Atherton, Knowsley CYPMHS. Carl was nominated by Jason Poole for the value of accountability.
Carl has invested a huge amount of time and effort over the past month supporting two highly complex safeguarding cases. He has done so without complaint and while taking full responsibility for each of his choices while acknowledging the contributions and good practice of others. He has led on having difficult conversations with other services involved with these children when concerns were raised that the right steps to keep them safe were not being taken, and a recent Rapid Risk Review concluded that his practice has "gone above and beyond" what would ordinarily be expected. He has made himself available to support these children whenever needed and has adapted his ways of working to foster engagement and ensure that they receive the best possible standard of care. He has also consistently linked in with colleagues within his own team, other Mersey Care services, and external services to ensure a joined-up approach with these children at the heart of it.
This has been an extremely busy time for our service and Carl's handling of these two complex cases has shielded the rest of the team from what could have easily become a significant drain on the wider service's resource. He has additionally ensured, to the best of his ability, that these children are as safe as possible. In my view he has been a role model for excellent safeguarding practice to his colleagues.
November's Team of the Month winner is Halton Recovery Team. The team was nominated by Katie Cole for the value of Support.
On a daily basis the team demonstrate the respect and enthusiasm value by ensuring our most vulnerable adults are cared for both mentally and physically. The team have sourced training within physical health to develop staff’s knowledge and expertise to ensure that our service users that struggle to seek support via the GP.
We recently had a very difficult case of a service user that was physically unwell, refused and held capacity to do so too seek support via both the GP and A&E. Recovery staff attended the home and took bloods and full observations, they also assisted with the service users ADL's and took care of some household chores. The bloods came back as the Service user was acute organ failure. The team spent 4 days caring for this gent at home, building up trust and eventually got the Service user to agree to attending A&E. Once in A&E it was critical for 48hrs due to blood clots.
This is an outstanding example of how the team are continually learning to gain the skills required to support our service users. The team worked together, with a robust plan involving multi agencies to deliver a holistic approach to the service user and ultimately saving his life.
This team go above and beyond on a daily basis, from supporting mental health, being able to monitor physical health and in this case supporting with household chores and ADL'S. A huge Thank you, there is no I in team and you have very clearly and proudly demonstrated this.