A premiere night for Nicole...

Nicole is a student at MacIntyre’s school at Wingrave, Buckinghamshire and she is about to become famous! Nicole and her family kindly agreed, along with others, to play a part in our new staff induction film Welcome to MacIntyre. This involved being followed all day by camera team who recorded Nicole at work and at play- just being herself and enjoying her day supported by MacIntyre colleagues. She clearly didn’t mind one bit and took all the fuss and bother in her stride.

Wingrave School then hosted a “premier screening” to thank everyone who contributed to the film and along with families and friends they put on a splendid event with red carpet, pop corn, finger buffet etc. Nicole’s mum, dad and brother were there to share her big moment and she looked for the whole world like a Hollywood film star. Her hair was done beautifully and with considerable care and she wore a stunning dress- designed and made especially for her by one of MacIntyre’s support colleagues. A lot of people had taken a lot of time to ensure Nicole was going to have a great evening and was going to look and feel great.

Her family were delighted, Nicole felt really special and I was so proud of my MacIntyre colleagues who had gone to such extraordinary lengths and fully entered into the fun of the occasion to ensure Nicole had a memorable night. For me it was a really stand out moment.

But I am not surprised; for a couple of years now Wingrave School has been using the MacIntyre Profile to recruit staff with the specific personal characteristics that underpin Great Interactions and in addition has developed an excellent staff induction which builds on this and teaches the soft skills that we call facilitation. As a result we can be confident that the quality of service is high at all times and not just on the exceptional occasions like the film premier. Every interaction, even the most mundane, is an opportunity for a Great Interaction- cleaning teeth, making a cup of tea, putting on a pair of socks etc, even at busy times or when colleagues are pressed and if one has only five minutes then it should be a good five minutes.

Bill Mumford

Getting the message across…

One of the most enlightening and enjoyable aspects of my job (apart from hanging out with the people we support in Worcestershire, obviously!) is the opportunity to listen to and engage with our support workers. With the launch of the Great Interactions book, it was evident that this merited a local launch; all too often, wonderful pieces of works and new initiatives come along and then quickly disappear and whilst I often hear staff locally referring to a ‘Great Interaction’, I wondered how they themselves understood the message and the meaning…

Rather than organise a large event for all the local staff, I decided that a far more effective way of really getting to know exactly what support staff thought about Great Interactions was to attend each team meeting over the next six weeks. So armed with a car boot full of books, I have been doing exactly that- listening, reflecting on what is working and what is not working and generally getting the message across. The biggest challenge for me has always been in explaining the message behind Great Interactions to support staff who confuse meaningful, everyday interactions with the big, ‘champagne moment’ holidays, with wonderful opportunities to try new activities, have exciting days out and so on. Whilst this is exactly what we do and do well, I also often heard the phrase ‘Great Interactions? So? We do this anyway…’ And I got to wondering ‘well, do we? Or have we missed the message somehow?’

So with this in mind, at the team meetings I have been to so far, we have discussed at length the small everyday interactions that really count and make a difference; from supporting someone to make their breakfast or do their shopping, from supporting someone to clean their house or cook their dinner, each interaction should be ‘quality’- an opportunity to make the person we support feel good and likewise, ourselves, in making that small difference. Better outcomes for both…I often explain to Support Workers that although they do the same job as Support Workers in other organisations, using Great Interactions as their benchmark will set them apart and make them, and the people they support, feel just that little bit better. And after all, isn’t that why we do what we do?

Finally, our local Worcester Roadshow is coming up in June and I am optimistic that within the displays and presentations the Great Interactions message will be coming across loud and clear- not in the champagne moments, but in the everyday stories, from ‘Kathy travels on her own’ to ‘Mark has a dragon’, each story carries the message that ‘it ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it’…

Anita Warner
Area Manager, Registered Care and Personalisation
Worcestershire

School Days

With the recent launch of MacIntyre’s Great Interactions book it seemed like an opportune time at the school to do some reflection of our own and to look back and review our own Great Interactions work.

The residential provision at the school has been fortunate enough to be involved in recruiting frontline staff through the use of the MacIntyre profile and competency framework since its outset. For us this means that for the past three years all Support Workers have been recruited this way and with the development last year of a Senior Support Worker profile positions to this role have also been recruited via this practice. Consequently over this time a real focus on the individual’s quality of interactions and the demonstration of core positive behaviours have been the focus of recruitment into the school.

Administratively the school requires a large number of frontline staff (over the last three years 80 Support Worker’s and Senior Support Worker’s have been recruited through the profile). Throughout this time we have been able to track and monitor the impact and influence that these staff are having on the provision. This has proved extremely interesting and has shown several areas of clear progress.

Firstly has been the improved retention of staff. Prior to the use of the profile the provision had problems in retaining staff, in particular staff leaving within their probation period. In the six months prior to implementing the profile six staff left in their probation period. In the past three years since using the profile the same amount of staff (six) have left in their probation period.

Another notable area over this period has been the increase in this group of staff’s willingness to engage in learning. This is reflected particularly well in the improvements made in staff attaining their NVQ level 3 in Children and Young People. Before using the profile a culture of NVQ learning was not in place which was indicated by only nine staff having attained the award across the provision. Three years on we were recently able to celebrate exceeding Ofsteds regulatory compliance to NVQ and now have 46 frontline staff that have achieved the award.

Finally one of the key focuses of the profile is to identify and recruit staff who can demonstrate the core behaviours integral to those of a natural Support Worker. We also wanted to know if indeed the principle that past behaviour is often a predicator of future behaviour has been borne out. In looking for evidence that illustrates this, over the past three years none of the profile recruited staff have been involved in any formal disciplinary process whether related to poor practice with students or poor attitude towards MacIntyre or their colleagues.

I hope this shows that for us using the profile has only helped us make good recruitment decisions and the positive influence that these staff are having at the school. We are also now seeing several profile recruited staff progress through internal promotion or other roles within the school and it will be of continuing interest to see the wider influence these staff may have within the organisation as they progress their career. With all this said it’s now been some time since I have wished I could turn back time to undo a staff selection I’ve made.

You also can not have failed to notice that over the last weekend the country celebrated a royal wedding. Jenkins Court was no exception and held its own street party and even the non monarchists had a great time. Apart from it being a fantastic and fun day for everyone, what was so obviously on display was all the time trouble, detail and thought that the staff went to in order to ensure that the students were involved, included and of course enjoying this national celebration in the way they wanted to, with many, many excellent interactions, even if unfortunately I didn’t get to do a balcony scene!

Maria Tole

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