The Limes is celebrating having been awarded the prestigious Triangle of Care accreditation by the Carers Trust.
The Triangle of Care is a partnership between professionals, the person being cared for, and their carers. It sets out how they should work together to support recovery, promote safety and maintain wellbeing.
Claire Langley, Patient Engagement Lead/Carer Lead at the Mansfield-based service, said: “At The Limes, we have a strong ethos of co-production. Elysium’s Corporate Expert by Experience, Sue Dennison, works closely with us and we hold co-production meetings. There is a Co-Production Patient Champion and I am the Co-Production Champion from the staff team.
“We have many different ways in which we try to encourage patient engagement, and engagement with families and carers. Everyone’s voice, ideas and viewpoints are really valuable when supporting people. Sometimes, for many different reasons, engagement can be limited. People’s families may be working, they may be based far away, and some people we support do not wish for their relatives to be involved in their care.
“We do hold carers’ events and an annual survey, but engagement can be low. We were looking for ways to increase engagement, and the Triangle of Care accreditation felt like it could be a good option to help us improve engagement between staff, families and carers and the people we support.
“Following an assessment, assessing ourselves against the Triangle’s six key standards, we have become a member of the Triangle of Care. We now have 12 months to work towards fulfilling all the criteria set out in the six standards. We have an implementation plan and work is underway. We have taken the first steps in this journey and now will look to embed and sustain the standards. We are really looking forward to linking with external organisations and coming up with new ideas to collaborate with families, carers and the people we support, whether that’s training, events or workshops.
“We have now also presented about the Triangle of Care at the national corporate governance meeting. The aim now is to have all Elysium services become members of the Triangle of Care.”