Muriel is a 48-year-old woman. She has been diagnosed with a Moderate Learning Disability and has been known to display behaviours that at times may be challenging.
Structure, routine and good time keeping are things that are extremely important for Muriel.
Her upbringing involved time spent with her Grandparents due to domestic issues between her parents. It was thought that Muriel may have witnessed/experienced some of this. This potential trauma was thought to play a part in her behaviours, especially towards males.
Having stayed with her mum up until a few years ago, Muriel had moved out into shared tenancy with support. This however created its own problems for Muriel, who felt that her support staff were forgetting about her. Time keeping was something that was very important to her and staff being late began to make her very anxious. When Muriel became anxious, it would become very hard to communicate with her and there was the potential for her to become physically aggressive with staff and/or members of the public.
This led to Muriel being moved to another tenancy, which she again, shared with a few others. This started off positively but again, anxiety over timekeeping caused Muriel to become distressed to the extent she assaulted a member of staff and a fellow tenant. This was reported to the police.
Muriel was now very distressed and back living with her Mum, who partly due to her own health concerns, was struggling to cope. Muriel was adamant that she wanted nothing to do with the present care provider.
This is when Sacro became involved.
Sacro’s goal was to support Muriel with her transition to a new accommodation and care provider.
After meeting Muriel and her Mum, we were able to put together a core support team. This was going to be kept quite small initially to allow Muriel to become comfortable. This was an important step in creating positive working relationships between Muriel and her support team. Muriel’s support team worked closely with social work to move her into suitable housing as this was crucial to allow Muriel to feel safe and secure.
After a brief spell in temporary accommodation, Muriel was moved into a new tenancy, just in time for Christmas. This move brought its own challenges however, as Muriel had to transition to a new Care Provider.
Sacro had to work closely with Muriel to really understand what made her support work for her. The answer to this was structure, routine and consistency. When working with Muriel, it was important that she was supported in a manner which allowed her to be her herself. This often meant staff spent a lot of time with Muriel baking; she was very proud of her baking skills. This was a way in which we could help build up Muriel’s confidence and trust in her support.
Sacro also had to work closely with the new provider to ensure they were properly equipped with the correct tools to make Muriel’s support a success and to prevent her reaching crisis point again. This meant sometimes working in ways that they weren’t used to, but in order for this support to be a success, it had to be tailored to suit Muriel and her needs. After supporting Muriel through her at times difficult transition, Sacro were able to withdraw and let the new provider take over.