This manual is designed to shift the mentality of those who work in care and nursing homes in order to emphasise a more compassionate way of caring for both the residents of the home and the staff who work there. This involves first learning to develop a sense of self-compassion, and then allowing this to permeate to all aspects of the home Part of the training contained is designed for managers, to alter their approach to their work and their teams, to make them more compassionate 'bosses', more self-compassionate and more able to build a lasting culture of care that will remain when they have moved into a different role elsewhere. The second part of the training is designed to be run with staff members, to enhance their compassion and the quality of the care they provide. It is therefore both a 'self-help' manual in one sense, and a training guide for staff development.
Andy Bradley's belief is that we must elevate the status of care giving. Andy created Frameworks 4 Change in 2004, having spent part of his childhood living in a care home for people with dementia. He went on to give hands-on support to people with profound learning disabilities and older people. Andy and the team at Frameworks 4 Change work hard every day to 'create and sustain consistently compassionate care' in a range of environments including residential care, domiciliary care and hospitals. The habit-building programmes that Andy and the team now facilitate are seeing dramatic results with continuous improvements to care and staff teams feeling valued and appreciated. He is currently working with the NHS and a range of care provider organisations to embed new cultures of compassion. Andy was recently recognised as one of 'Britain's New Radicals' by The Observer newspaper and NESTA, and his work on mindfulness and compassion in healthcare has been covered by the BBC, ITV and The Independent. Andy is a speaker for TEDX and is regularly asked to present on creating compassionate communities in which all belong. Andy sees Health and Social Care through the lens of compassion and imagines a new paradigm in which we all see ourselves as belonging to consistently compassionate communities in which care is given as part of a good life.
Foreword: Why am I writing about eh Compassionate Community?; Chapter 1: Introduction; Chapter 2: Research and Evidence; Chapter 3: leading with Compassion; Chapter 4: Compassionate community Toolkit; Chapter 5: The Flourishing Community; DVD. The DVD contains a series of videos of the exercises for the staff training, which will act as a guide to the manager or person running the training, and some footage taken in a home that is very much a 'compassionate community' to demonstrate what is possible if the training is successful, and to provide a benchmark of that all homes should be striving for.
