At Achieve together, our team members are fully involved in everything we do. Their passion and dedication drastically improves the quality of the lives of the people we support. The case of SC, from Park Avenue is no exception.
Team members noticed that her behaviour had subtly changed, but could have been mistaken for a slight decrease in her medication and the adjustments to that. As she doesn’t speak, she could not articulate her direct issues. Nevertheless, they took her to the doctor, who put her on antibiotics.
However, the team have worked with SC for a number of years, and knew something was still up. She was suddenly more vocal than ever before. She used to communicate in a very calm, quiet manner, she suddenly became really loud, constantly throughout the day and wasn’t sleeping.
She was also making no attempts to feed herself, whereas beforehand she was a keen eater. Furthermore, when she would use a frame to walk, she started to exaggerate her movements, either walking really slowly or going really fast. The team pushed to see professionals as soon as possible. The psychiatrist originally gave her an appointment in March, but her support workers knew SC should see one sooner. They managed to bring the appointment forward, to the first week of February, and also went to see a physio and back to the GP to cover all bases and make sure SC was properly diagnosed.
Although they are waiting for a comprehensive diagnosis, without the tenacity of staff at Park Avenue, doctors would have just sent SC home with antibiotics. By knowing her and her normal behaviours so well, they were correctly able to assess that something was wrong and used their initiative to make sure that everything was done in order to make sure SC was okay.
Incredible work from staff, and we wish SC the best of luck in her recovery.
