SCA Stories
Here is a small selection of our customer stories showing how our services are making a positive difference to people's lives:
Mrs C attends an SCA Wellbeing Centre:
Mrs C, an 80 year old lady with failing health and memory, relies heavily on her family to support her living independently. Like many families both her daughters need to work and were struggling to keep up a high enough level of support which would keep their mum living in her own home.
The family met to reluctantly talk about Mrs C going into residential care as they did not feel it was safe for her to continue living alone, Mrs C had always expressed the wish to stay in her own home where she had enjoyed many happy years with her husband raising their family. After an assessment by Adult services several days a week at one of our wellbeing centres was offered, which Mrs C agreed to take on a trial basis. She soon settled at the wellbeing centre and loved mixing with her peers once again. Mrs C said she feels like she is coming out to her “own special club” where she can have fun and enjoy good company. Mrs C’s family feel that they have the ability to balance their work/home lives with taking care of their mother who at this time will remain in her own home as she wished to do.
Supporting People to Live Independently:
We support two sisters who have learning difficulties. We have been supporting them for almost 14 years. The sisters lived all of their lives with their parents until their died in the mid 90’s. Social services were unsure whether the sisters would be able to live independently without their parents. The house was falling apart and had not been repaired or decorated for many years. The sisters had never been separated - ever - they had even slept in the same bed since they were children. We took over supporting them from then on. They now live in a house of their own, with a bedroom each. They attend clubs, go out for lunch and go on holidays, all with support from our team of support workers.
High Dependency Care:
Mrs P moved from a residential care home placement into an extracare flat in Southampton, where we are the care provider. Mrs P has very high care needs, following a severe stroke, these needs would 'normally' be met through nursing home care. However, Mrs P wished to live with her partner in a more independent setting. We provide Mrs P with three carers at every visit (this was our first ‘triple-up‘ care package that we have delivered). Mrs P now continues to live ‘independently’ with her partner as she wished to do and they often use one of our Dial-a-Ride buses to take trips into town together.
Transport Providing Added Value:
Recently we provided transport for a group of homeless / temporary accommodation clients. The driver was asked to join in with the group to make the numbers up. The focus of the sessions was to show that problems can be overcome with hard work etc at this point our driver added “Yes, that’s true because at one time I was couch surfing and jobless but here I am today”. The group leader asked if he could continue to drive the bus for the remaining sessions as his experiences had had an impact. This request was of course met with pleasure.
A second example of how our transport services make a difference is where we were contacted by a local funeral directors to ask if we could provide a wheelchair accessible taxi to take a lady from the Royal South Hants Hospital to the Crematorium. Her husband – of 40 odd years had passed away while she was there. We confirmed we could do it and arranged the times etc the plan was to collect her from the ward and either join the cortege or go direct to the crematorium. However, when the driver arrived the lady was not ready and the ward would not let her leave before she ate lunch (she is diabetic). Our driver informed phoned into the office and we made arrangements for him to wait her and go direct to the crematrorium and then take her onto the wake before returning her to hospital. We waited for 30 mins. If a regular wheelchair taxi had been used the driver most probably would not have waited and she would have missed her husband’s funeral. Our driver wore a black tie on the day to show respect for the occassion.
For more stories see individual service pages.
