Dignity Champions
Fountain Care Ltd and Loving Care Ltd are dedicated to promoting the dignity of our service users and staff across all of our residential care homes.
We have teamed up with Dignity in Care, a charity whose core values aim to put dignity and respect at the heart of Care in the UK and we now have at least one Dignity Champion in each of our homes.
A Dignity Champion is someone who believes that being treated with dignity is a basic human right and not an optional extra. Having a Champion in each of our homes means that they are able to ensure that all our staff are practising and contributing to the promotion of dignity in their day-to-day work.
To achieve dignity in our homes we make sure we recruit staff with the right attributes. We look for people who are compassionate, person centred, and are willing to go above and beyond to deliver exceptional care when supporting our service users.
We provide training to all our staff, so they are able to understand and encourage dignity in all areas of their work. Our service users have person centred care plans, are listened to and their views are respected. We acknowledge that we are coming into our service users homes and that they have the right to feel comfortable, supported, and relaxed wherever they are living.
Dignity in Care have 10 Dignity Do’s that we like to follow:
- Have a zero tolerance of all forms of abuse.
- Support people with the same respect you would want for yourself or a member of your family.
- Treat each person as an individual by offering a personalised service.
- Enable people to maintain the maximum possible level of independence, choice and control.
- Listen and support people to express their needs and wants.
- Respect people’s right to privacy.
- Ensure people feel able to complain without fear of retribution.
- Engage with family members and carers as care partners.
- Assist people to maintain confidence and positive self-esteem.
- Act to alleviate people’s loneliness and isolation.
When striving for dignity in our homes we look at 8 different factors that will contribute to a person’s sense of self-respect and happiness:
- Choice and Control
- Communication
- Eating
- Pain Management
- Personal Hygiene
- Practical Assistance
- Privacy
- Social Inclusion.
We feel we can achieve all these even if we make small changes in someone’s life, it can make a big impact.
Our main focus is that every person is an individual and what we do for one person may have a completely different effect on another.
After a lot of hard work promoting Dignity in our homes, our lead Dignity Champion, Sean King, was nominated for the award of Dignity In Care at The London Regional Great British Care Awards in 2019. Sadly he did not win the award, but he did make it into the top seven for the region and got to attend the awards ceremony.
See Sean with our Area Manager Jane at The Great British Care Awards, 2019
