All aboard with Adam, Sam and their crew

Keep safe Batman

If you are strolling through Wardle Village near Rochdale and you see a Batman figure in a bedroom window, urging you to ‘Keep Safe’, you are probably looking in on one of our successful Shared Lives arrangements.

It’s been made by Mark, 31, who has to be Batman’s Number One fan. He lives with his Shared Lives carer Andrea, 50, in her two-bedroom flat.

If you listen to Andrea talk, you feel this is more than just an ‘arrangement’. It is more like a beautiful friendship.

Andrea was employed as his Personal Assistant for 35 hours a week. She says “I would support Mark, for example with transport to day services; activities such as the gym or cinema. One of his ambitions was to see The Jeremy Kyle Show, so I managed to get some tickets. It was amazing he really loved it”.

When Mark went into a respite unit for six months, Andrea no longer had her job as his Personal Assistant. That didn’t matter to her, she still kept in touch with Mark. “Mark would come for dinner once a week with his girlfriend” she says “And I would visit him at the respite unit; we did Christmas shopping together and he came to us for Christmas day”.

During this time Mark said that he would really like to live with Andrea, so she went to see the Shared Lives Team. She says “The team at PossAbilities were absolutely amazing. They worked so hard to enable Mark to come to live with me. I did all the training needed and went to the approval panel”. That was it. A new life began for both of them.

“He’s drawing a canvas picture at the right now,” Andrea says proudly, “For his girlfriend’s mum”. They are in Coronavirus lockdown at the moment and he is keeping in touch with his girlfriend over facebook and video calls.

For anyone thinking of becoming a Shared Lives carer, Andrea says “Go for it. Mark brings a lot of happiness into my life, and you feel that you are doing something for a vulnerable person which makes their life better. She added, “Since he came here we’ve been working together to improve his literacy. I think he feels that he has got a lot more independence. He makes his own decisions with support from me, and he seems to be enjoying life”.

It sounds so sweet, though they have their `up’s and down’s’ like anybody living together. Yet they have their own way of dealing with it “We usually do something that will pick us up; I’ll sing to Mark or he will sing to me. We do tend to pick each other up which is good”.

Carve your name across the sand

When Eileen Pritchard’s husband sadly passed away, she wondered what on Earth she could do with herself.

Her friend who was a Shared Lives carer, suggested that she could become one too. But for Eileen, full time caring commitments were not what she had in mind, and anyway she thought that she would be too old. Then she realised that it didn’t have to be full time, and that she could support people in her own home in a flexible way. She is now 60 and realises that you are never too old.

It all began by doing day care, just two days a week from 9-30am to 3.30pm with just two people. She says “I found that I really enjoyed doing it. We would go to the park, go out for lunch or, as I’m quite sociable, we would go bowling”.

She took on more regular people for day care and began doing some respite care – where people come to stay with her for a short time to give their carers a break. She enjoys being able to have some weeks when she is working and some weeks when she is not. She lives with her daughter Rebecca, 35, who is also an approved Shared Lives carer and they share the tasks.

“I’m so proud of Ronnie” she says, “I’ve been doing reading lessons with him. I do a lot of baking and Ronnie has really taken to it. He can go to ASDA himself where he buys the ingredients and self-scans them. He plans what he will make each week and his cakes are absolutely fantastic. I’ve got pictures of all of his cakes. He takes them to the day centre that he goes to and shares them out, and if it’s somebody’s birthday he will make a birthday cake”.

Now, Ronnie has been on a catering course for a holiday, which is fantastic, especially since up until two years ago when he was 50, he had never been on holiday and never seen the sea. Eileen says “We took him to Blackpool. He was absolutely amazed when he saw the sea for the first time. He ran and put his feet in it. Because he could now write, he carved his name across the sand and it brought tears to my eyes”.

Eileen can rattle off such stories all day long – the twins who were supposed to take respite separately but when one told the other about Eileen’s place they both insisted on coming together; the 74 year old man who had grown up in the area who bumped into old school friends when she took him to the pub; How Rebecca can talk to the lad’s about football and computers, whilst Eileen knocks up a cheese and onion pie; and how they all get on with her grandchildren, which is so important to her.

Eileen, having at first thought that she was too old to be a Shared Lives carer, now sees things a little bit differently “I’ve loved it” she says, “It is the best thing I have ever done. As an older person I am calmer, I’ve got life experience and nothing can shock me”.