Christmas question

[forumAdmin]

In our work during the run up to christmas how many of us work with people who have issues or challenges relating to christmas

what are the challenges / issues that you face / faced?
and
how did / do you sort around them?
?.............

[bethr]

Hi guys,

for most of the people i work with there appears to be a lot of anxiety around 'family' stuff and maybe being at home for the christmas period. For some of the young people i have worked with, we have tried to make things quite structured, and not leave any 'gaps' e.g. almost give them a timetable of what/where they will be going at different points during the holidays, and letting them know when staff will be collecting them/dropping them off. This seems to have lessened some of the anxiety which has been quite useful. SOme of the young people have been given calendars as well, so that they can have a visual reminder of what is happenging when, and this has worked quite well too.

The staff team have also used some consistent reassurance messages which also seems to have worked. I would be interested to find out any other stuff people have used?

Beth

[forumAdmin]

SOme of the young people have been given calendars as well, so that they can have a visual reminder of what is happenging when, and this has worked quite well too.

I found with one person that because his service house had the name of a colour in it and he freely associated a colour with the family home that we used a calender and colour coded days in a stripe through the number of days at each then the staff and the family marked off a day each breakfast. This was all year though....

that helped.

Another thought
if having the family around for xmas is stressful for us - how hard must it be for the people we work with?

[andy]

Christmas is a time to remind people of thier families or lack of them. Many people I work with find Christmas difficult, especially those who are in longer term residential care. It is really difficult to be low key about the event as a professional. Still seriously remember that Christmas is a reminder of good and bad memories for people

[forumAdmin]

Now that christmas is past did any members have any issues or stories they would like to share from this seasons festivities....