Sensory Conference
Speech - Sue Hawkins
Firstly I would like to take the opportunity to introduce myself to those in
the audience that I haven’t met before. I’m Sue Hawkins and I have
recently joined Essex Cares taking on the interim role of Director of
Home Support Services, which includes responsibility for the Sensory
Service. It has been a pleasure today to learn so much about the
proactive steps that are being taken across Essex developing sensory
services.
I hope you all have enjoyed the conference equally and that you have
been able to take away something from the excellent workshops and
guest speakers.
As many of you may know Essex Cares was the first Local Authority
Trading Company providing adult social care set up in 2009 by Essex
County Council. As a company we are focused on delivering a diverse
portfolio of services that are customer focused and promote prevention
and early intervention all with the aim of enabling individuals to live
independently in their homes and local communities.
Essex Cares services benefit both residents of Essex and West Sussex
and include: Home based services like equipment and Reablement as
well as community based services like Wellbeing & Activity Centres,
Work Based Training and ECL Supported Employment, Outreach and
Home Share. Our services are interwoven offering a seamless outcome
centred approach to adult social care of which our sensory service plays
an important part.
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I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you a little more about The Essex
Cares Sensory Service. The small team managed 737 referrals last
year across the whole of Essex.
The team are committed to providing enablement, choice and control
through its trained and experienced Rehabilitation and Mobility Officers,
Technical Officer and Sensory Assistants. Their core day-to-day
function is ensuring sensory impaired customers have the key skills,
training, equipment and confidence to safely maintain independence at
home and out in the community.
In recent months one of our Rehabilitation and Mobility Officers
undertook a full programme of long cane mobility training with a
gentleman with Usher Syndrome. The aim was to enable him to safely
manage his commute to work in Canary Wharf using a long cane. Night
blindness associated with Usher Syndrome meant that night time
mobility was very difficult. This was his first time using a white cane of
any sort and he was quite apprehensive. He was successfully trained to
use the routes around his home and his usual journey to work in Canary
Wharf using public transport. The skills he has learned have given him
confidence and independence. It is his choice if and when he uses his
cane but he knows that the Sensory Service will be able to provide
refresher training in the future if needed.
The next example illustrates how the sensory impaired can still achieve
goals and personal aspirations, the team strive to assist customers to be
as independent as possible.
One of our Rehabilitation and Mobility Offices supported a visually
impaired young man to undertake his role as an Olympics
Volunteer. This involved in depth training, preparing him for his
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commute which took him from Wickford to Stratford and across to the
Olympic park using his long cane. We journeyed with him on the route
several times and familiarised him around the Olympic park to his
‘station’. This was very successful and he confidently and independently
achieved his aim to be volunteer over the two weeks events.
Essex Cares works closely with expert voluntary sector organisations
such as Action for Blind People and the Royal Association for Deaf
people and can either support independently or jointly on employment
issues for example. Carly Waters, whom you may have heard speak
earlier, uses her knowledge of specialist equipment and Access to Work
to advise customers. For example this enabled a self-employed lady to
purchase a screen phone with funding support from Access to Work thus
ensuring she could maintain communication with her business
customers.
The team strives to keep abreast of the fast pace of changing innovation
and technology so that this information can be shared with customers
and to this end they attend specialist equipment exhibitions and invite
speakers to team meetings.
Good working relationships are maintained with a wide range of
voluntary sector providers to ensure our customers have choice and
control. The Sensory Service has developed partnership working
initiatives with the local voluntary sector and provides a presence at
hospital eye clinics and audiology. Timely intervention and information
is essential if individuals are to get the best out of services available to
them and meeting people at the point of diagnosis is one way in which
this can be achieved.
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The Sensory Service has been mindful to ensure Essex Cares generic
services are sensory aware and for over eighteen months has been
delivering in-house training to Outreach, Reablement, HomeSafe and
Day Centre managers and front line staff. Over 185 staff have received
a full day’s sensory awareness training and the feedback has been
overwhelmingly positive. We are also currently delivering specialist
Sighted Guide training to our Outreach staff to widen the range of
services available to visually impaired people in Essex.
Sensory awareness training is something we feel passionate about
because we know how difficult it can be to access services from
organisations who don’t understand. We are currently working in
partnership with three sensory impaired customers to develop our
training courses so that they can be tailored to individual needs.
Learning from trainers who can talk about their lived experience can be
very powerful and we aim to encourage service providers such as health
and social care, transport, businesses, employers and residential homes
to book onto our training and receive, in one session, awareness about
sight impairment, hearing impairment and deafblindness.
We hope that the impact of this will bring more accessible services to the
county and increase customer confidence when using these services.
Our trainers feel empowered through their involvement in developing this
training and we aim for this to lead to employment for those who want it
and the opportunity to involve more trainers with sensory impairment as
the service grows.
These are a few of the ways the Essex Cares Sensory Service
endeavours to shape a brighter future. If you would like to know more
please do come and speak to me afterwards or to one of the team here
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today there is David Johnston the Sensory Team Manager and Faye
Gatenby one of our Development Co-ordinators.
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