Just how have things changed for the Health & Wellbeing Co-ordinators in the Community Learning Disability Team, this pandemic?
Having good health is as important to people with a learning disability as everyone else, and for the majority of people with a learning disability most of their health needs are met by their GP or primary care team.
However, people with a learning disability often have additional health problems, such as certain medical conditions, sensory impairment and physical disability. They may have difficulty understanding and communicating their health needs, or difficulties accessing health services and activities that promote healthy lifestyles.
Care Plus Group’s Community Learning Disability Team (CLDT) is a multi-disciplinary team that provides specialist health services to support these additional needs, with Health & Wellbeing Co-Ordinators specifically employed to help reduce the health inequalities people with learning disabilities face. When the coronavirus pandemic struck at the start of the year, like many health care services, they had to solve the conundrum of how to continue providing care amongst these unfamiliar circumstances.
Alison Kargbo, Health & Wellbeing Coordinator for the Community Learning Disability Team, said: “In early March, the team were already in an unfavourable position with staff shortages due to a couple of colleagues on maternity leave. This had already caused several changes to how the team were working, with more changes planned as the crossover of maternity covers left a gap of around three and half months.”
It was only a couple weeks after this point that coronavirus really started to take a grip and force the UK into lockdown.
Alison said: “Once the UK went into lockdown, slight panic hit us. Managers prepared us to work from home, routine appointments were cancelled and we were asked to only see people if it was essential or urgent. What did that mean? How do you determine if an appointment for someone is essential or urgent? In fact we are still trying to define it, as people’s circumstances are so different that there isn’t a one box fits all!”
Like most of the country, the Health & Wellbeing Co-ordinators from the CLDT had to adapt to working from home and in new ways for the foreseeable future. As such the team were tasked with prioritising their caseload of clients into a “high risk” group and offer those that fell into that category regular phone calls to support them from a distance.
Whilst circulating information to as many people as they could that they were still working, albeit from home, the team were worrying that they might have been redeployed to frontline care if there happened to be staff shortages in other areas of the organisation.
Alison said: “We were going through a rollercoaster of emotions with the whole pandemic, and some days we found it difficult to offer support to our clients when we didn’t know what was happening ourselves. If we’d have been redeployed this could have left our already vulnerable clients, even more vulnerable when they needed support most.
“We continued to make our now routine welfare calls to share as much up to date information as possible, provide support and an ear to listen to our clients and their families, as well as liaise with other professionals when issues arose.”
After only a few weeks of working from home it became apparent this setup wasn’t going to be for a few short weeks, but more than likely a few months.
Alison said: “We had clients with significant changes to their health, mainly as an indirect result of not attending their usual health promotion activities, or a decline in their mental health partly due to being stuck indoors for weeks on end.
“Our usual routine work on health action planning took a major hit, with a number of these being delayed. These are normally a great tool for ensuring people’s health needs are met and routine appointments such as dental, optician and annual health checks are attended. If there are changes to someone’s health, this is followed up by supporting the booking in of necessary appointments, onward referrals, tests or procedures.”
Alison adds: “In regard to the health action plans we have managed to accomplish there have been a large number of routine appointments which have not been completed, due to pandemic restrictions across health services. We’ve also found that worryingly, people were still waiting for what were initially deemed as “urgent” investigations.”
On a positive note, the Health & Wellbeing Co-ordinators have maintained a lot of contact with clients and other professionals and services, managing to share information resulting in some clients not going into a health crisis, or joint working when this has occurred.
Alison said: “The team have spent hours liaising with other services and joint working with other services so that clients are not forgotten during the pandemic and their changing needs are continuing to be met.
“We have been able to complete new client contacts using Zoom and traditional phone calls, as well as completing several new hospital passports this way. The team have continued to have regular contact with our more vulnerable clients and been able to offer them support during these strange times, whilst also reinforcing the Governments message in a clear and concise manner for them to easily understand.”
Alison adds: “We have used and shared resources around coping with the restrictions with our service providers so that they can help people to understand how the world has changed from before the pandemic started to where we find ourselves now.
Before Lockdown 2 was announced and came into force on 5th November, the team were able to meet back in the office for one day a week to see colleagues and talk face-to-face about clients, any issues colleagues are facing and new ideas to try.
“It’s something that we’ve been able to do over Zoom and the phone, but it just doesn’t seem to work as well as when we are able to communicate with each other in person”, adds Alison.
“We caught up with colleagues we hadn’t seen for a while and there was a feeling of normality almost returning. This was of course until the more recent announcement to again “work from home” where we can, which has again reared issues of isolation and limiting face-to-face contact for the next few months.”
Whilst the Community Learning Disability Team have continued to put their clients at the fore during the pandemic no matter their own working arrangement it hasn’t been without worry and stress on their own part.
However, Alison concluded: “Everyone from the CLDT have been really supportive with one another, as well as colleagues from our wider team. It’s been so important throughout these tricky times that we’ve been on hand to help each other when we’ve needed support with either work or personal issues. Even though we haven’t seen some of our colleagues for several months now, it’s clear for all to see that we’re still one big team!”
For further information or to contact Care Plus Group’s Community Learning Disability Team please call 01472 571120 or emails CPG.ALDS@nhs.net.
