Everyone has the right to a meaningful life
Activity Specialists to the Care Sector
Our mission is to help you select the right care or support service to place your loved one. We understand that this will be one of the most difficult decision you will ever make.
At Seize The Days we feel that a big part of your decision should be focussed on Activity. Activity that your loved one has the right to enjoy every day as they look forward to life in their new home. It is the responsibility and moral duty of your chosen care setting to deliver a person-centred choice led and inclusive activity programme for your loved one.
However, It is NOT a legal requirement… yet.
At Seize The Days we are working around the clock to change that, because we feel that activity Is fundamental to our health and well – being and that’s 100% true for you and I.
A successful CQC registration or inspection is not dependant on a high-quality activity programme. Activity does however play a part in the CQC’s decision making when it comes to assessing a home’s strengths and weaknesses and it’s no surprise that many of the homes with an outstanding CQC rating would appear to have better activity programmes. This is great news. But more can be done.
Ratings Model
Why trust to chance? Read our activities rating for the homes you like the look of.
Seize The Days offers its own ratings system. 100% independent and totally objective based on our own information gathering from services up and down the country. The rating is simple to understand yet comprehensive and totally transparent.
Hands up! Who’s been on holiday to a hotel based on Trip Advisor ratings and been left disappointed? Just us then?
With respect, ratings taken from the families of service users in our care homes can vary wildly and that’s to be expected because as individuals we all look for different things and some people are more easily pleased whereas others have different expectations.
The CQC, the care sector’s regulator and watchdog offers a tiered ratings system to assess a services compliance levels based on its rigorous impartial investigation and testing methods. It is to be applauded for that.
Our aim in that regard is to be the go-to industry standard for activity ratings.
We hope you’ll like what you see and read, and we’d love to hear your feedback but we’d especially like you to… Seize The Days!
Lockdown
Positive engagement is what we thrive on as human beings. Lockdown has left many of us feeling down. Words like Isolated, lonely, frustrated, stressed, depressed, overweight, under exercised can be applied to a lot of us as we missed that positive engagement with our friends and family.
Back to normal-for us
We get to pick up the threads of our lives and enjoy our freedoms again albeit in a “new normal”. For residents in care and support settings it’s not that simple. On a minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day basis they are at the mercy of the services you have decided to place them with. Whilst some have coped admirably, many others have suffered through COVID, staff have left the care sector in alarming numbers, putting even more pressure of care providers to deliver, but activities are more important than ever and not an area that needs to suffer as a result. On the contrary if we use a little creativity and imagination married to some activity training centred around positive engagement, an immense amount can be achieved. The end result will also improve the morale of an included and valued staff team going forward.
Benefits of Activity
A good activity programme improves both physical and mental health and can lead to an improvement in overall general health. It can build confidence and skill sets, improve brain and motor function which collectively reduces the burden on the NHS. Take a look at our graphic on the benefits of activity.
Activity makes us feel better!
Fun, happiness and enjoyment through positive engagement releases endorphins or “feel good” hormones and they improve our mindset. Activity comes in many different shapes and sizes from playing monopoly to climbing Everest! and everywhere in between. Preparing a meal or simply giving the room a tidy can be classed as meaningful activity in the right context. There are thousands of activities that services can use to plan engaging and stimulating activity programmes to help our loved ones get through the day and give them something to look forward to.
Seize The Days can help services by creating activity plans drawing from over 35 years of activity planning in different settings. We can also help services by tapping into funding and resources to improve activity programmes.
Remembering the good times
Some of the best times in our lives were for free or cost little and that’s good to know. Cast your mind back to an event or activity that made you feel good, it could be anything from going to a concert to see your favourite band, mine was watching the Human League at Sheffield City Hall! or simply having a good chinwag with the neighbours.
Can you remember your first kiss and how that made you feel? What about your first dance at the school disco or maybe your first sleep over? Your first dress, or your first visit to a Night Club? Scoring your first goal at football or hitting treble 20 at darts, borrowing your big sisters high heels or your brothers Doc Martins! It really doesn’t matter what the activity, your memory takes you back to the time and evokes the positive emotions that surround it.
A good activity programme will tap into those memories and blend them with new experiences.
Checklist for a good Activity Programme
Put simply, your chosen care provider will understand that providing a safe, clean and comfortable environment with 3 meals a day is not nearly enough to keep peoples’ spirits up, maintain their physical health and give them a meaningful life. With this in mind here’s our simple checklist of what we think you should reasonably expect from a service:
- A service that creates an activity programme that is both enabling and empowering and set up to succeed with the appropriate resources and staff well matched to the person/people and activity.
- A service that understands your loved one’s life history around their favourite activities and employs that history to create tailored activity programmes that will help to give them a meaningful life.
- A service that fully embraces the positive physical, mental, social, emotional and cognitive benefits that come from performing an activity.
- A service that plans and delivers a person-centred, inclusive activity programme for your loved one with choice at the centre of its thinking.
- A service that trains its staff in the planning and delivery of activities through positive engagement-so more people can help to plan and deliver the activities programme.
- A service that aims to Keep your loved one stimulated and actively engaged in the things that they love, in addition to carefully selected choice led appropriate new activities, it’s going to make you feel much better about your choice and it’s going to give your loved something to look forward to every day.
- A service that collaborates with others and takes advantage of opportunities to improve their activity programmes on an ongoing basis.
- We strongly suggest choosing a service that has a comprehensive programme of activities and has at least a rating of GOOD with the CQC.
A few home truths
- The truth is, the level of activity provision in care and support settings varies dramatically. Some services provide the bare minimum, whilst others offer more, but recognise the need for help and guidance to improve. We are more than happy to help in this regard.
- It’s not uncommon for homes with over 50 residents to have just 1 full time activity coordinator with assistance perhaps only in the form of part-time staff, and when either person is not on shift¸ no-one delivers the programme.
- In many homes there is a disconnect between care workers and activity coordinators and this can cause friction in the service. The service users are of course the ones who are impacted the most because of this lack of harmony.
- Many activity coordinators find themselves having to raise substantial sums of money to fully deliver their activity programmes.
- Often in our care and support settings, staff have not been trained in Activity provision, leaving Activity coordinators isolated and under pressure to deliver. Seize the Days will train care staff, giving them the skills and confidence to help in the planning and delivery of activities that make such a positive difference to our loved ones.
NB There are a limited number of care and support services who tick all the boxes and deliver fantastic activity programmes and Seize The Days will provide them with the platform they fully deserve to showcase their great work. Look out for them in the provider directory on this website and through your social services and NHS placement contacts.
The ‘will’ to make a difference
I think we’d all agree that you can have years of experience and training and have many qualifications, but they are of little value if you don’t use them. Without the constant WILL to engage and the PASSION to make a real difference any Activity programme will fail miserably.
Seize the Days positive engagement training instils care staff with the confidence, motivation and above all, the WILL to make a consistent positive difference in the lives of those under their care.
Win, Win! Everybody Benefits
- Our loved ones are the biggest beneficiaries from an improved Activity programme.
- The care provider, championed by us who receive more inquiries for beds due to their improved activity programmes, trained staff and positive rating. It may even lead towards an improved CQC rating.
- You, the families and advocates of the service user can check out our Activity rating for the service and speak to Social Services and NHS Commissioners who also receive this information from us.