Friday, February 17, 2012

The Meeting

I was not looking forward to the meeting at the house. Not at all. It went amazingly well.

Despite what the agency says, the staff has not been adequately trained. Old staff are supposed to train new staff, but there isn't a training program and there is no guarantee old staff were trained correctly. The House Manager is going to retrain everybody.

We made some changes to help for now, and I will go train the entire staff in March.

Daughter will have the Home Manager's number in her cell phone, and she can call her directly, taking me out of the loop.

The dietitian's menu was needlessly complicated. We came up with a simplified menu that gives Daughter choices for lunch and makes it easy for staff.

Daughter is being manipulative. I gave them hints on dealing with her manipulation.

It's a beginning. I can live with that for now.

4 comments:

Miz Kizzle said...

That's good news. You must be relieved.
Having experienced staff train new employees may sound good in theory but every time I've see it practiced in reality it's been an epic fail. The problems range from seasoned employees innocently passing on misinformation to them deliberately showing the newbies the wrong way to do things out of spite or in an attempt to make their own performance look good in comparison.

Reverend Mom said...

I am very relieved. Very. I may suggest that they develop a training manual. They have a number of different group homes they own, and so a training manual with standardized procedures would serve all their homes well.

Anonymous said...

pIsn't it amazing how God looks to be using your involvement with your daughter's home to improve the whole environment (we trust) for residents AND staff at more than 1 site? Must be tough to feel successful at work with needlessly complex expectations and no clear way to get trained. You are such an encouragement to me -- esp. as my daughter turned 18 yesterday (!!) and may need supervised living options in the future. R in SL

Reverend Mom said...

It is amazing, and I have some suggestions I'm going to make for improvements to their program. I'm just trying to figure out how best to approach it.

I remember 18-- it was a hard year. Daughter struggled with society's expectation that she was now an adult. I kept reminding her that I had always allowed her to progress at her own rate, and that wasn't going to change because of some magic number.

Good luck as you continue this journey with your daughter society now considers to be an adult.