2020 has been a difficult year. In particular for those people who were shielding or unable to leave their homes/communities, vital lifelines of social interaction were cut. For some, community groups, events and accessing local facilities are lifelines for wellbeing. Face to face rehabilitation and therapy sessions have been halted despite the person's desire to continue to make progress. At KEYFORT, we have continued to strive to make a real difference in what we deliver in ever-changing times.
In our North West team, Jenny took an innovative approach to make sure K (identity protected) was able to continue to receive the meaningful support in a different way. She shares her work in our first KEYFORT blog telling us about the content of virtual lockdown sessions and the barriers they encountered when working in a new way.
Virtual Lockdown Sessions
Session format
“During lockdown, K and I (Jenny) have moved our sessions onto Skype. This has affected the activities we can do and we have had to adapt to working virtually.
Prior to lockdown, we had one session per week at K’s home. K required a lot of help with technology, and we spent a lot of time on her laptop practicing different tasks. Other activities we did were more practical and included scrabble, cards and sewing. We also planned a recipe for a cake which we baked shortly before lockdown."
"During lockdown, our sessions changed to 2 virtual sessions per week. We use Skype for these sessions to see each other and speak, and mainly used Google Docs for typing, as it allows both people to see and edit text.”
Barriers we faced setting up our ‘Virtual’ sessions
· Different technology: “K was using a MacBook whereas I only have experience with Windows. This meant that troubleshooting with K was difficult as I wasn’t familiar with her technology. I was able to Google questions about MacBooks to help advise K, and as the sessions progressed, both K and I became aware of the common issues that would arise and so these were easy to solve.”
· Not being able to see K’s screen: “This meant that if a problem arose, I couldn’t see what it was. We found that if K verbally described what she was looking at, I could sometimes help her. She would sometimes take pictures of her screen as well and show these to me to help. I commonly would describe icons and buttons to press and what they look like and where to find them on the screen. Sometimes I would hold a picture of the icon up to the camera for her to see.”
· Resources: “Slow WiFi was sometimes an issue and we found it was very easy to just phone call and then sessions could progress as normal.”
What we did in our ‘Virtual’ Sessions
“The virtual sessions have been a success but the content has been very different to sessions before lockdown. We had to be creative at the start when planning activities to do. We found an online scrabble game as an alternative to playing scrabble in person. We were able to continue with the daily blog and care plan writing, but move these from Word onto Google Docs, so that I was able to see what K was writing. These were the only activities we were able to continue with, and the rest we had to start fresh.”
“K has always liked to work with a purpose and wants activities to be meaningful and useful. K was cooking a lot more during lockdown so we decided to write a recipe book. This project incorporated lots of elements and skills: researching recipes, typing them up, organising and formatting, taking pictures, uploading pictures. It has been a fun project and has helped K come very far with her computer skills.”
“Our second project has been to create a family tree. This has been a challenging project as none of us had any prior experience of making one. We found a website and, with K sharing her screen, have been able to start to fill in the details of her family members. K has been getting in touch with a lot of her relatives who she normally doesn’t speak to often, so this has been a nice experience for her, and she is very proud of and excited about the project.”
K’s comments
K says she has really enjoyed the virtual sessions and that they have been challenging in a good way.
We are really proud of K and Jenny. They have been able to find new ways of working to make sure that important sessions can take place. Its an amazing example of always finding a way through any tough times.
"Its not no, its how"
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