April 3, 2014

Shared Lives Wales Update

Emma Maylor-Davies from Shared Lives North Wales discusses how her team get Service users involved in the Selection process at their May meeting.

“Recently in Wales we have had an influx of applications from people wanting to become Shared Lives Carers. The Shared Lives Team and Service Users have spent a lot of time bringing Carers through the recruitment process. Because of this during the May Service User Meeting we looked at the questions they would like to ask prospective carers.

We used a picture of a house as a basis for the discussion and we all either wrote or drew a picture of what we thought was most important to us in our homes. We also looked at the current questions and discussed them as a group to see if we needed to alter them at all.

When we came together as a group several main themes came through as to what was most important to us all: having someone there to support them and to give them advice; knowing that the carer was qualified to care for them and that they had been DBS checked; knowing their friends and family could come and see them; if the carer had any pets and that the carer would support them to do things they enjoy and want to achieve.

We had a great discussion and several Service Users volunteered to take part in the assessment process. Team Wales are now also lucky enough to have our very own Shared Lives Street made up of our drawings on the wall!”