Amazing how experience in one area of life can prove useful in a completely different situation…
Following much experience working with children 5 – 12 years from a rich variety of backgrounds, through very tough times as well as the easier ones, as a primary teacher and later as Head Teacher at Fyvie Primary and Nursery School, I was then trained by Grampian Region to offer practical workshops and presentations on all sorts of topics …
And that training is now useful in very different circumstances, when I am asked to present a practical workshop or give a presentation on How To build the most effective all-round 24/365 communication in a care-giving situation – all built on what I learned during my own experience as a family care-giver when my daughter Jay was extremely ill with anorexia, binge-purge type, yet refused professional treatment. At the same time my mother developed Alzheimers. Plus working over several years on charity telephone helplines, and with an OU Service Users and Carers Development Group (our work fed into the Health and Social Care Honours Degree), listening to the experiences of so many others in a wide range of situations over the last fifteen years. Much reading and research too – all this gave me a vivid picture of the changes in attitudes over the years in medical circles towards family and other home carers.
Without effective 24/365 all-round communication and collaboration – involving professional, family and other home care-givers, plus good professional/family communication – to build well-coordinated care, it is unfortunately possible (probable?) that treatment will be much less effective than it could have been.
All of which fed into my non-fiction books –
- Surviving Family Care Giving: coordinating effective care through collaborative communication
- Families, Carers and Professionals: building constructive conversations
- Anorexia and Bulimia in the Family: a parent’s guide to recovery
also the book for care givers I co-authored with Professor Janet Treasure and Dr Anna Crane –
…And all of which form the basis of my current workshops and other presentations.