17 Jan 2024 Community

The Kirkwood spotlight - Debs Hanson

The Kirkwood over the years has developed new ways to care for people. It has developed its staff and given its workforce the opportunity to express itself and bring new ideas and schemes to the table. One of our brilliant staff members is Debs Hanson, a hard working and dedicated person who cares about the job she is doing and the difference she is making to patients' lives. 

Debs joined The Kirkwood in 2016 and has always had a passion for caring for people. We as a charity gave her the platform to explore different areas of the care sector. She explained how working for The Kirkwood has developed her skills. 

She said: “I'd always had a passion for palliative care and that's what I'd done in my previous job.

“I worked in Canada for many years and was a palliative nurse specialist. When I moved back to the UK I'd always had the intention of carrying on in palliative care to some degree.

“At first I was working as a district nurse locally in the Dalton area and I was the end of life care Champion for the team that I was working in. However I wanted to do more specialist palliative care.

“I knew about The Kirkwood and knew of its reputation, I knew it was the biggest provider of palliative and end of life care within Kirklees.

“A job became available and I applied and was successful and got the job and it was the best move I made because palliative care is definitely where my passion is.

“I've always found it a real privilege to support somebody at the most vulnerable part of their life, which is at the end of their life. To be able to support their family members through one of the hardest times that they'll have to experience, and to be able to support somebody to die peacefully, comfortably and with dignity by meeting their wishes and preferences for that person and their families. I still count that as a true blessing and that's why I'm still here doing the job that I do.” 

Debs has now worked for The Kirkwood for eight years and has over that time gained valuable experience caring for patients with life limiting illnesses. She now heads up our care home care initiative and collaboratively works with 121 care homes across Kirklees. 

Debs and her colleague Rosemary Holland go into care homes and support those staff members who are looking after residents with life limiting illnesses. They do this by supporting staff with training, advice, information and overall guidance. 

When she was first asked to set up the care home service, she admits herself she wasn't interested in the project and felt a bit daunted by it. 

She said: “When the role was originally talked about and funding was available for the service to be set up, I wasn't interested. I was very happy working in North Kirklees doing what I was doing and I didn't apply for it. I believe that the role was originally offered to somebody externally, however they went back on their word so it was re-advertised. I don't know whether I was just in a different frame of mind on that day or what, but I thought actually I'm ready for a new challenge. I'm going to go for that so I applied and got the role.

“I have to say it was very daunting to set up a service from scratch. Although I knew some of the care homes in North Kirklees, I still hadn't had that strong relationship with them because it wasn't my everyday round of specific care role. At that time if somebody lived in a care home, I'd go into the care home and support that resident but I wasn't care home focused at that time. So it was really daunting to scope out the need for the role and service. It felt like I had all eyes on me because I was setting up a new service that hadn't been available before.

“I think for The Kirkwood, it was a really exciting opportunity to be able to extend our reach and to support care homes because people that are living in care homes often have a lot of complex conditions that they're living with and there's a lot of people out there living in care homes. We're an ageing population.

“We're living longer with more complex medical conditions and therefore care homes have got more and more people in their care that are going to need access to specialist palliative care. So I suppose naively I didn't realise what a huge task it was going to be. I think in the early days a lot of my role was about forging those relationships with the care homes, letting them know that we're here to support them so that they knew where they could go.” 

On what her role entails she added: “I started the post in April 019 and originally it was set up as a designated specialist palliative care service to support care homes in North Kirklees with palliative and end of life care.

“It's not just supporting the residents, it's about supporting their families and the carers too. The service is there to support staff with training and educate them about end of life care within their homes. Originally that was a service that we provided just for North Kirklees.

“Then after about 12 months, it was commissioned by the Integrated Care Board, the ICB to cover the whole of Kirklees. 

“I work with Rosemary Holland. So there's two of us in the team and we support every care home across Kirklees, we support homes that provide support for people that are older, but also care homes that provide support for people living with mental illnesses, physical disabilities and learning disabilities. We support all types of care homes, not just those that support the elderly. 

“We work very much in collaboration with community partners including: Locala Care Home Support Team and Locala District Nursing Teams; South West Yorkshire Foundation Trust Care Home Liaison Team (which supports people in a care home who are living with mental health illness); as well as with the Kirklees local authority; Kirklees Health & Care Partnership; Kirklees Care Association; and the NHS West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board. We also have forged strong working relationships with the Kirklees GP's and PCN's.  

Debs and Rosemary showed their bravery, courage and dedication during 2020 when the world was hit by the global pandemic Covid-19. As the country shut down and people were told to stay at home, key workers like Debs and Rosemary were on the front line battling against the pandemic and continued to support care homes in the face of adversity. 

Looking back at that time, Debs finds it difficult to put into context how hard it was to work through that period. 

She said: “In that time care homes weren't having relatives going in, in the early days residents and care home staff felt very isolated very quickly. Whilst I know it was a pandemic that we had never experienced before and things changed on a daily basis, I think that unfortunately care homes were given a bit of a raw deal and were forgotten about. So it was really important that they still had support from us. So despite Covid-19, we still continued to provide a service.

“I know that my colleagues had to quickly adapt and were using video consultations. However for the care home cohort, you know, technology is not something that an elderly person can often get to grips with easily. So providing an assessment via WhatsApp or Teams on an iPad or whatever wasn't always appropriate for care home residents. So we still went in, we still provided that service, obviously keeping ourselves and those people that we were encountering safe by wearing appropriate PPE. However I do think keeping the service going in the pandemic was very important.” 

Since Debs set up the care home service in 2019, she has seen a number of stats rise in her area. The number of care home residents being supported by The Kirkwood Care Home CNS Service has increased by 93% from 2021 to 2023. In 2021/22 the team had 233 face to face consultations with care home residents that rose to 423 in the last year, an upward curve of 82%. That same trend can be seen in telephone calls. In 2021/22 693 calls were made, which rose to 1843 in the last year, meaning a rise of 166%. The amount of referrals from care homes to The Kirkwood has also risen, it was 52 in 2021/22, and that has risen to 90 in the last year. 

Finally Debs reiterates why those figures have gone up and why that proves the service we are providing is important. 

She said: “I think a lot of people would say if you asked them where would you want to be cared for at the end of your life, most people would not choose for it to be in a care home because of the stigma around them. 

“I think care homes have had to evolve over the years and when I look back to when I was starting out in my career 30 years ago, care homes were nice places where people retired.

“It was where the wealthy elderly went. They're not like that now they are more like little mini cottage hospitals.

“People are living with a lot more complex needs for longer and it is really sad as social care is struggling and there just isn't adequate care provision available now. People are having to stay at home however they can't get the standard of good quality care there. Everyone is in a catch 22 and that is why I believe we as a charity are so vital to the Kirklees community. The services we provide help to support life. 

“When I look at the number of referrals the service has had year on year since 2019. It is ridiculously going through the roof. It's gone up 93% from last financial year to this financial year. That's because there isn't the same social support available. People are having to consider care homes when maybe they wouldn't necessarily want to, but they've got no other options because their care needs cannot be met in the community within their own homes.

"Also people who are living with complex life limiting illnesses are living longer. So whereas 10 years ago somebody may have died from living with a condition like COPD for example, in today's society, those same individuals are now living much longer

“I think The Kirkwood is vital for bridging that gap because when people are living in care a care setting, and as their care and treatment needs become more complex; there is a need for us to step in and provide the level of high quality advice and support that is very much needed by the care home resident, their carers and their loved ones.”