Trevor’s journey to happiness at Priory Roseneath
Trevor* is a young man on the autism spectrum, who also has ADHD, global development delay, and a learning disability. Before arriving at Roseneath, Trevor had been in hospital for six months, having been moved out of his previous residential home. He needed four-to-one care, displayed concerning behaviours and was often isolated and left alone.
Once we were identified as a suitable placement, the transition to Roseneath was very quick, and along with his social worker’s support, we ensured Trevor was met by two members of the Roseneath team before he moved in, so he could become familiar with us first.
Initially, the change was quite traumatic for Trevor – his behaviours were challenging and various incidents would occur daily. He would be physically aggressive, grabbing staff, pulling hair, biting, hitting and kicking. He would also often drop to the floor on days out and would not move for hours, often being physically aggressive while doing so.
Turning life around
The team at Roseneath quickly identified that behaviours were worse around shift changes and he would become very unsettled. Therefore, the team started to include him more actively in staff handover sessions, where he would get to say thank you and bye to the staff that were leaving and greet those arriving.
Positive behaviour support (PBS) was then introduced and we worked with Trevor’s social worker to ensure a robust PBS support plan was put in place to best support him. This included:
- Making his own drinks, including hot chocolate with staff encouragement and very little support
- Helping his support staff to put away his food shopping and will get involved in simple cleaning and meal preparation tasks
- Getting himself dressed and undressed, including putting on a clean incontinence pad
When he first moved in, he would rely on staff to do these things for him, but with the great time and dedication from the staff team to build up his confidence, he is now doing these things with very little support. Medication management is now also much easier and safer and Trevor now welcomes doctors into his flat. He even recently allowed them to perform a blood test – something which he has never tolerated before.
His social worker has said that she has noticed that he is so much happier than before, and when she visits and calls him, he is laughing and joking with her and his staff. He has weekly phone calls with his mother, and has regular video calls with his social worker.
He can now transition between activities much better; he will tell staff he is “not ready yet”, and will spend time chatting and joking with staff until he is ready to move onto the next activity or task, rather than becoming unsettled.
For the first two years of living at Roseneath, Trevor would not get into the car to access the community. Now, he goes out at least once a week, which has really opened up further opportunities and new activities that he can participate in.
He loves to go to the garden and bounce on the trampoline, going to get his hair cut, going to the pub every Tuesday for his scampi and chips, going out in his van every Thursday to do a different activity such as bowling, mini golf and safari parks.
“Staff at Roseneath provide an extremely good level of care for a service user that l support and this is very evident to see, as the service user appears happy and now calls Roseneath their home. The service user is being treated as an individual, with respect and dignity, which they did not receive in their last placement. I am really pleased with the support and care Roseneath staff provide and would recommend this service to other professionals.”
Social worker
*Name and images changed to protect identity