Iris Care Group Impact Report: Celebrating our 1st Year

Iris Care Group was formed in 2023 from the merger of Ludlow Street Healthcare and Holmleigh Care Homes.

We are proud to be one of the UK’s largest specialist providers now, offering the full pathway of services for people with learning disabilities, autism, mental health issues and personality disorder, along with neurodegenerative conditions and Acquired Brain Injury.

We have very skilled and experienced multidisciplinary teams who provide treatment and care for some of the most complex mental health conditions and behaviours that challenge.

Our teams are passionate about providing high-quality and person-centred treatment and support, and we are proud of the outcomes that we have helped the people in our care achieve.

We believe that the people we support should be active participants in their own care, and we are dedicated to ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard and that we are driving positive change together.

We have produced this report to celebrate everything we have achieved since we formed Iris Care Group - we hope you will find it both informative and inspiring.

Peter

Peter Kinsey Chair and Chief Executive

Introduction from Peter Kinsey, Iris Care Group’s Chair and Chief Executive

I am delighted to share with you our first Iris Care Group Impact Report.

We believe that the people we support should be active participants in their own care, and we are dedicated to ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard and that we are driving positive change together.

Our Vision and Values

When we brought together Ludlow Street Healthcare and Holmleigh Care Homes in 2023 one of our first priorities was to agree a clear vision and set of values that everyone shared and were committed to.

Working collaboratively, the people we support and our staff defined what they believe Iris Care Group should stand for. This included the culture we would all like to work and live in, and a set of guiding principles for everyone to work by.

We are incredibly proud of the culture, vision, and values that we have created together, and we are committed to embedding them in everything we do.

Our

Vision

Our vision is to provide excellent services that promote the independence of the people we support and help them to be active members of their communities.

Our teams are compassionate and place a real emphasis on listening to and respecting people’s wishes. We are proud of the work we do supporting people and are committed to enabling people to live meaningful lives.

We actively encourage our teams to continually learn and develop, providing

opportunities to develop and progress their careers. We are committed to being an employer of choice making sure that our teams feel valued and supported.

Our ambition is to continue to grow and to consolidate our position as one of the leading specialist care providers in England and Wales, with a focus on supporting people with complex needs and behaviours that challenge.

Our Culture

We put the needs of the people we work with at the heart of everything we do. With compassion and respect, we provide the highest quality of person-centred support within safe, positive environments. We actively listen to our staff and the people we support, as we recognise that we are

continually learning and striving to improve.

We believe human potential is the most powerful force for moving forward and achieving success. We strive to build a culture of belonging where everyone is supported and encouraged to be their best.

Our Leadership Team

When we formed the new Iris Care Group, we were excited to expand our Executive Leadership Team to reflect our growing organisation.

Our leadership team includes members from both of our former organisations - Holmleigh Care Homes and Ludlow Street Healthcare – and has grown to include new Directors who will help us to shape the future of Iris Care Group.

To ensure we stay committed to our goals and values, we are able to draw on the experience of our team, all of whom have extensive experience in social care, healthcare and education.

Peter Kinsey

Chair and Chief Executive Officer

Peter Kinsey is Iris Care Group’s Chair and Chief Executive Officer who oversees all of our operations and strategic direction with a focus on quality, and works closely with our Board to achieve our organisation’s objectives.

Dr Andrew Hider

Clinical

Director

Dr Andrew Hider is a Consultant Clinical and Forensic Psychologist, and Iris Care Group’s Clinical Director. Andrew oversees all areas of clinical service delivery across Iris Care Group.

Sarah House Operations Director (Hospitals)

Sarah is the Operations Director for Iris Care Group’s Hospitals division, responsible for our three specialist hospitals in South Wales – St Peter’s Hospital, Heatherwood Court Hospital, and Pinetree Court Hospital.

Helen Leigh Operations Director, Social Care (Wales)

Helen is the Operations Director for our Social Care services in Wales, including our Ocean Community Services Residential homes, and our SEN Education division, Beechwood College.

Michelle Cox-Coley Operations Director, Social Care (England)

Michelle is the Operations Director for our Social Care services in England, which includes our Supported Living homes and our Specialist Nursing Care service, Pirton Grange.

Janine Strange

Group Commercial Director

Janine is our Group Commercial Director who is responsible for the business development team, achieving our occupancy targets and developing new services to expand our service offering and provision, and liaison management with commissioners and external stakeholders.

Yvonne Murray Group People Director

Yvonne is Iris Care Group’s People Director who is responsible for the management of all of Iris Care Group’s Human Resources, recruitment, and staff wellbeing functions.

Chris

Saunders

Group Chief Financial Officer

Chris is our Group Chief Financial Officer, responsible for all of the financial aspects of Iris Care Group. Chris also oversees key areas of risk including cyber and IT security.

Division and Organisation updates

Supported Living

Our Supported Living division encompasses our homes in the South West of England, providing support for adults with a wide range of needs including learning disabilities, Autism, mental health needs, physical disabilities, and acquired brain injury.

Team update

In December we appointed a new Assistant Psychologist post to support our Supported Living and Specialist Nursing Care teams in England. The Assistant Psychologist enables our teams to implement our models of care with the people we support, and promotes our organisational values in everything we do. The new role is already proving to be effective, with positive improvements evident in the confidence of our teams and the quality of support.

We have also expanded our Tenancy Liaison team to include a new Tenancy Liaison Assistant. The Tenancy Liaison team provide vital housing and financial support for the people we support, including obtaining benefits, and accessing community and work opportunities.

Improving our homes

One of our priorities following our merger was to invest in upgrading the quality of our homes, and we are proud to share that we have already made incredible progress towards this goal.

Since May 2023 we have:

15 Installed new kitchens

18 Installed new bathrooms

30 Upgraded the décor and furnishings in more than of our homes

Annual Operational Plan

Since forming Iris Care Group, our teams have developed a new Annual Operational Plan with two key focus areas – improving quality of life for the people we support and developing our teams.

We want to provide industry-leading care and inspire our teams to think creatively about the support and opportunities that they can provide for the people living in our homes.

Each quarter, we bring our teams together for a Living Our Values Review, where teams can evidence their actions towards delivering our Annual Operational Plan, showcase their outcomes, and suggest new ideas and initiatives to build upon the plan.

New Active Support programme

We have developed a new Active Support training programme for our staff, encouraging our teams to ensure that every moment has meaning and potential when providing support.

The programme also includes a new observational tool to guide practice and inspire our teams to think creatively about the support they are providing.

Managers and senior support staff have all undergone this training and, whilst the programme is still in its early stages, it is already showing improved outcomes; building on the important work our teams have been doing with the people we support to provide social and community opportunities, develop new skills, and gain greater independence.

Our teams have also been collaborating with colleagues in our Welsh services to develop goalsetting training. Working closely with the Clinical Team we have developed a programme of workshops centred on problem-solving that will support our staff to identify methods to improve the quality of life of those we support.

Just looking at my brother these days you can see in his features all the stress has gone and in its place we see a glow, and a sparkle in his eyes once again.

Quality improvements

Our internal Quality Team has been working with our teams to develop new strategies to drive quality improvements, auditing each of our homes and the support we provide.

We have already made great progress, and our internal quality ratings – which are based on external regulation standards from organisations such as the Care Quality Commission – are showing steady improvement.

Our recent Supported Housing Improvement Programme assessment was also a great success, with Gloucestershire City Council commending our teams for the work that they do.

The Whispers Forum

In 2023 we established the Whispers Forum, a new self-advocacy initiative that enables us to improve our homes and the support we provide in collaboration with the people we support. Named by the people we support, the Whispers Forum brings individuals living in our supported living homes together to share their opinions and have their voices heard.

The forum is off to a great start and the forum members will be conducting their own audits of our homes with support from the Quality Team, providing their perspectives on the quality of care and environments provided based on their firsthand experiences.

The group has developed a Quality Checker checklist with the Quality Team, which is a list of questions designed to help the people we support communicate their thoughts about their homes and the care they receive, including important questions such as ‘Is there space to move around?’, and ‘Do staff take time to know what people are interested in?’.

They are trialling this quality checklist throughout Spring 2024, and are working to develop a new role within the forum – Quality Checker – who will work directly with the Quality Team to inform improvements to our homes and processes.

Family Member, Supported Living

Division and Organisation updates

Hospitals

Iris Care Group operates three specialist hospitals in South Wales – Heatherwood Court Hospital, St Peter’s Hospital, and Pinetree Court Hospital.

All Iris Care Group hospitals achieved 3Qs in QAIS inspections

We are proud to share that in 23/24, all of our hospitals received 3Qs – the best possible result - in their inspections from the Quality Assurance Improvement Service.

Team update

In 2023, we appointed a new role – Quality Lead for Hospitals – to support our operations teams with governance, quality, and patient safety processes.

We have recruited more than 200 new team members across all of our hospital sites, with many experienced individuals being appointed as Positive Practice Workers. This new Positive Practice Worker role aims to draw upon their clinical knowledge and experience to embed the principles of positive and proactive care in the direct support being delivered on our wards.

They provide practice leadership to teams to ensure that prescribed and psychologically-informed care is consistent, and they are instrumental in promoting individualised person-centred Behaviour Support Plans in each patient’s care.

They also support ongoing data collection to support governance oversight and patient progression along their care pathway.

Restraint Reduction

We are proud to share that as of 2024, restraint use is at an all-time low across all of our hospital sites. Our teams work closely with external organisations such as the Restraint Reduction Network to reduce restrictive practice and implement preventative measures to ensure adherence to the reducing restrictive practices framework.

We have continued to implement several key initiatives throughout 2023/24 to support this, including:

• The ongoing provision of evidence-based Behaviour Support Plans for all patients.

• Learning debriefs completed with both patients and staff following all incidents of risk behaviour, enabling our teams to identify training needs across all disciplines and strengthen our restraint reduction processes.

• Person-centred, patient-focused approaches to all decision-making regarding care planning and care pathways, including the application of the relevant legal frameworks for each patient such as the Mental Capacity Act.

• Involving patients in all aspects of their care planning, and in governance processes within hospital settings.

• The use of a live data incident recording system, providing timely analysis of risks and restrictions to inform our risk management and restraint reduction planning.

• A focus on training and workforce development within Iris Care Group as well as the wider health and social care sector, sharing our learnings with external professionals to drive positive improvements in restraint reduction efforts.

St Peter’s Hospital

The hospital is now able to support people from age 18 years upwards, and we have expanded our patient profile to include organic personality disorder.

St Peter’s appointed a new Service Director and a new Clinical Lead in 2023, and the hospital’s strong leadership team was commended in their subsequent Health Inspectorate Wales Inspection. The inspection also noted that there were zero noncompliances, and highlighted the hospitals welldefined systems, effective governance, and kind and compassionate teams. The hospital’s bespoke, person-centred care plan approach has also been commended by regulators.

St Peter’s Clinical Lead has also joined the Royal College of Nursing’s Standards Champion Network. Acting as the hospital’s Workforce Standards Champion, they drive improvements in the workplace and promote best practice using the RCN Nursing Workforce Standards.

They have also been participating in a series of round table events with RCN Wales on the topic

of Nurse Leadership in the independent sector, including delivering a presentation about how the St Peter’s team embed Safety I and Safety II principles to create a better staff culture. They are due to have an article on the topic published by the RCN in 2024.

Two members of St Peter’s Clinical Team have helped to lead the development of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Neuropsychiatry Quality Network, a new network to support evidence-based quality standards in neuro services. The network officially launched in Spring 2024, with St Peter’s Hospital as one of the network’s founding members.

The Clinical Team has also introduced a monthly ‘Clinical Skills Day’ to identify additional training needs for staff and develop action plans with the multidisciplinary team to deliver the required training.

In 2023, one of St Peter’s Physiotherapists achieved a degree in hydrotherapy from the Aquatic Therapy Association of Chartered Physiotherapists, enabling us to deliver hydrotherapy across all of our treatment pathways. We have seen a decrease of more than in restrictive interventions in Iris Care Group’s Welsh services in the last 3 years (2020-2023) 75%

Division and Organisation updates

Heatherwood Court Hospital

A new Skills Tutor has been appointed at Heatherwood Court, supporting patients to achieve Essential Skills Wales (ESW) qualifications with bespoke learning plans. Each patient has undergone a Wales Essential Skills Toolkit assessment to determine their target level for the qualifications, and we have seen increased engagement with Education amongst the patients we support.

The Education Team has also created a bespoke wellbeing course – Health & Wellness – to support patients to build skills to support their health and wellbeing independently.

Heatherwood Court has introduced a new Inhouse Training Programme for staff members. Delivered by different professionals from our Clinical Team and Operations Team, the new training programme focuses on providing an extensive education on the hospital’s operational and clinical processes.

Essential Skills Wales qualifications

This year, we have appointed a new Therapies and Activities Coordinator to further embed our structured evidence-based treatment programme – “Every Step Matters” – across the hospital. This is informed by a staged approach to treatment for people with the most complex needs.

Each month, Heatherwood’s leadership team run ‘Skills Day’, a new staff training initiative that builds on the existing skills of the team, whilst also supporting staff to develop new skills. The sessions offer bespoke training in a range of different areas including security and professional boundaries, as well as refresher courses for essential skills like First Aid and CPR.

In 2023, we also created a new Security Hub at Heatherwood Court. Operated by our Security Lead and Security Officers, the hub introduces new patient and staff safety processes to improve security at the hospital.

Heatherwood Court’s Education Team are supporting patients to gain Essential Skills Wales qualifications.

As of Spring 2024, six patients completed their ESW qualifications in Application of Number Skills, with one patient also completing an ESW Communications qualification; eleven other patients are also working towards achieving these qualifications.

Pinetree Court Hospital

In 2023 we appointed a new Clinical Lead and a new Unit Manager at Pinetree Court, and several of the hospital’s Support Workers qualified as Registered Learning Disability, Mental Health, and General Nurses. The team continues to conduct regular Primary Team Meetings, bringing Pinetree’s multidisciplinary team together for reflective practice to strengthen patient safety processes and identify additional training needs.

The team has also been building strong relationships with organisations and disability-friendly employers to create more community and work opportunities for patients, including Sue Ryder, Cancer Research UK, Llanrumney Hall and Hub, Rumney Hill Garden, Aubergine Café, and Cardiff Dogs Home.

Patients are regularly supported to access employment and work experience through Cardiff Council’s Into Work scheme, and they receive additional employment training for individuals with learning disabilities through Cardiff People First, including Disability Inclusion Community Education courses.

The team continues to conduct regular Primary Team Meetings, bringing Pinetree’s multidisciplinary team together for reflective practice to strengthen patient safety processes and identify additional training needs.

The hospital is also participating in two Welsh Government schemes: Keeping Wales Tidy, and Local Places for Nature. Patients have been supported to develop their outdoor skills and create a new community garden at the hospital through these schemes, with plans to continue to expand the garden and outdoor spaces.

New community garden

Pinetree Court has created a new community garden at the hospital in collaboration with the Keeping Wales Tidy scheme.

Pinetree Court continues to collect and publish outcomes on it’s ‘Building Better Lives’ programme. This programme ensures that focus is on skill building, discharge planning, and the prevention of future admissions.

In Spring 2024 we opened Juniper Studio, a new bespoke self-contained flat, and we are currently redeveloping Juniper Lodge to include two more bespoke flats.

Division and Organisation updates

Residential Homes

Our Residential division encompasses all of our Ocean Community Services homes in South Wales and Bristol, supporting individuals with mental health needs, autistic spectrum conditions, learning disabilities, acquired brain injuries, and forensic histories.

of our residential homes received 3QS in their 23/24 QAIS Inspections, and positive reports following their Care Inspectorate Wales inspections.

Award-winning care

We were incredibly proud to see several of our team members recognised as both finalists and winners at The Great British Care Awards and the National Care Awards this year.

Five of our team members were also winners at our first ever Iris Care Group Staff Awards, including one of our Area Managers who won the Quality of Care Award, and one of our Senior Support Workers who won a special award to acknowledge exceptional care, The Hero Award.

Developing our team

In 2023 we launched a series of Manager Progression Workshops; our new staff training initiative that aims to develop the skills of our existing Support Workers and Senior Support Workers to progress their careers into more senior roles.

The workshops have had an amazing impact on our team, with a number of our staff progressing to Home Manager roles. As a result of this new initiative, we also have a significant number of staff who are fully trained to assume both permanent and interim management roles as required.

The Great British Care Awards: our finalists and winners

Ocean Community Services residential

Improving outcomes

Our team has developed strong links with disabilityfriendly employers and organisations this yearincluding SCOPE and The Co-operative Group - to support the individuals in our care to access work experience, develop employability skills, and gain paid employment.

We now have a number of the people we support in both paid and voluntary roles, and we are supporting one individual to learn how to develop and manage their own business, which is a goal they would like to achieve once they step-down to live independently in the community.

Iris Care Group has created two bespoke recovery models for the people we support – Recovery in Supported Environments (RISE) for individuals with mental health needs and Building Better Lives (BBL) for individuals with learning disabilities.

As a result of these models, we have seen an increase in positive transitions and step-downs to supported living homes, and we will be continuing to implement these bespoke recovery models for the people we support.

New developments

We developed a new residential home in 2023 –90 Windsor Road – to provide our Beechwood College students with the opportunity to live in the community whilst completing their education. The service was specially designed for people on the autism spectrum, and the home received 3Qs in its first QAIS inspection.

A new residential development is also in the works for 2024. Situated in the Pentyrch area, we are delighted to share that this new home will comprise five new bespoke self-contained flats for people with learning disabilities and or Autism.

Thank you for supporting him over the years. I am retiring at the end of December, and it is comforting to know that he is well supported and treated with positive regard.

Social Worker for an individual we support, Ocean Community Services

New developments: 90 Windsor Road

Division and Organisation updates

Specialist Nursing Care – Pirton Grange

Pirton Grange is our specialist nursing care home in Worcestershire. The home is able to support adults with physical disabilities, as well as a range of complex neurological conditions including dementia, Korsakoff syndrome, Huntington’s Disease and Acquired Brain Injury.

In 2023, Pirton Grange was rated ‘Good’ by the Care Quality Commission.

Team update

In 23/24 we expanded the management team at Pirton Grange, which now includes a Clinical Manager, Senior Nurse, Home Manager and Deputy Manager. The service’s leadership team is key for maintaining our current clinical oversight.

To expand upon the care and support we are able to provide at Pirton Grange, we appointed a new Activities Coordinator to deliver an extensive programme of engaging, person-centred activities. The Activities Coordinator works collaboratively with external professionals including holistic therapists and aromatherapists to deliver a diverse range of sessions that account for the unique needs and interests of the

people we support, with sessions conducted at Pirton Grange as well as within the community.

In 23/24 we also established a new inhouse Physiotherapy Team at Pirton Grange. The Physiotherapy Team provides 1:1 physiotherapy support, as well as regular group physiotherapy sessions. The team have already made amazing progress with the people we support, and they have been working in collaboration with other professionals at the home to ensure that sessions are accessible, engaging, and tailored to each individual.

The Pirton Grange team also receives additional support from an Assistant Psychologist who is able to offer guidance to all of our teams in England. The Assistant Psychologist offers support to our teams to implement our models of care and promote our organisational values in all of our activities.

Operational improvements

The Pirton Grange team has been working closely with internal and external quality teams to continuously improve the service. In 2023 Pirton Grange completed a successful quality audit with Worcestershire County Council and ICB, where quality improvements across the service were recognised by the inspectors and within the final report.

Pirton Grange is currently in the process of training several members of staff as Dementia Champions and Oral Health Champions to provide additional support in these key care areas.

Additional training is also being completed by staff members across the service – including active

This is the happiest mum has been in a care home, thank you.

Pirton Grange, Family Member

Pirton Grange

support and goal setting training – to further develop the knowledge and skills of the team.

The team has also been working hard to expand the range of activities that are available at Pirton Grange, which includes a new event series created in collaboration with the Iris Care Group England Events Committee, bringing the people we support together with their families and friends to celebrate key holidays.

For example, in Spring 2024 Pirton Grange arranged their first Easter Egg-Stravaganza with everyone enjoying a day packed with fun, food, activities, and music!

Upcoming at Pirton Grange

Pirton Grange’s Deputy Manager is also a talented artist, and in Summer 2024 they will be completing a five-week art project in collaboration with the people we support. The project will entail learning about art and exploring a range of different art styles and techniques together, before creating individual final artworks to display around the home.

A new ‘Residents Forum’ is also being established at Pirton Grange, providing more opportunities for the people we support to provide feedback on the home and the care that they receive, and further channels for the people we support to input towards decisionmaking at the service.

The leadership team are also in the process of creating a new internal staff awards to recognise the outstanding contributions and incredible achievements of team members across the service.

In 2023, Suzanne Parker (Registered Manager at Pirton Grange) was a finalist in the regional finals of the Great British Care Awards for the Home Manager of the Year Award!

Easter Egg-Stravaganza, Pirton Grange

Division and Organisation updates

Special Educational NeedsBeechwood College

Beechwood College is our Special Educational Needs College in South Wales for students on the autism spectrum, and with additional learning needs.

Thanks to all at Beechwood College for the fantastic support, dedication, personal commitment and care provided to both our daughter and us.

Team update

In 2023, we appointed a new Practice Development Lead to support improvements in all areas at the College. We are already seeing fantastic results following this new appointment, and our training compliance is now at an all-time high.

We continue to grow our team, and in 2024 we launched the Beechwood Leadership Bootcamp, a new program aimed at developing our leadership team and supporting our staff to develop their careers.

Operational improvements

We received an excellent report and positive feedback in our latest inspection from Estyn, the education and training inspectorate for Wales.

Building Better Lives (BBL) is one of the bespoke recovery models created by Iris Care Group. A bespoke version of BBL has now been created for Beechwood College students, which is being rolled out throughout 2024. We have also updated our MDT

process to become more person-centred, which has improved our students’ outcomes.

Our Student Forum has grown, with several Student Representatives in post and a special new role created within the forum – Student Quality and Safety Officer. Working with the Beechwood team, the new appointment attends our weekly quality and safety meetings to share feedback from the Forum.

Communication boards have also been added around the campus to provide more opportunities for students to share their opinions about the College, and their ideas for improvements. We also added 3 new subjects to our 23/24 curriculum following feedback from our students – Science, Engineering, and Photography.

Our teams have also developed strong links with local employers to support students to gain work experience, including Dogs Trust, Marco’s Café, and Age Cymru UK. We have also added a new visitor centre to our campus, and our residential students continue to be supported by our Residential Team to personalise their homes.

Driving positive change for additional learning needs

We aim to champion positive change in education for people with additional learning needs, and the Beechwood College team continues to support initiatives towards this goal on both a regional and national level.

Beechwood College’s Principal has supported the development of a new national application form for local authorities to apply for specialist provision, with the goal of making education for those with additional learning needs more accessible. She was also invited to speak about delivering specialist educational provision for students with complex needs at Coleg y Cymoedd’s Additional Learning Needs Forum.

Student Parent, Beechwood College

Estyn has also recommended Beechwood College to several SEN colleges to share best practice and guidance for the delivery of specialist educational provision.

Our Consultant Clinical Psychologist is one of the contributors for Public Health Wales’ Matrics LD, a national guidance document for working with learning disability and autistic populations. He has also been delivering specialist training –Adapting Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Autism – to external organisations including Cardiff and Vale CAMHS, Aneurin Bevan University Health Board NHS, and the cycling charity Pedal Power. In 2024 they will also be delivering this training for students at Cardiff University completing the Clinical Associate in Applied Psychology (MSc).

Andrew RT Davies (Leader of the Welsh Conservative Party) also visited Beechwood College in 2024 to gain a greater understanding of how autistic students can – and should – be supported in Wales, and was impressed with our provision and what the college had to offer students.

We aim to champion positive change in education for people with additional learning needs, and the Beechwood College team continues to support initiatives towards this goal on both a regional and national level.

Celebrating our students

In Spring 2024, our photography students were excited to exhibit their work at the Pedal Power Inclusive Cycling Café, with some of their works made available for the public to purchase. Photography students from our Camera Club also saw their work featured on S4C’s Prynhawn Da, a national television programme.

Family Fun Day

We held our first annual Family Fun Day in Summer 2023, a special event where we welcomed the families and friends of our students to Beechwood College to celebrate the end of the academic year and our 2023 graduates.

Our students have also been made finalists in a national art competition for an artwork they have created together, with the winning piece displayed at The Senedd.

In December our students worked together to create a spectacular end of term show for their families, friends, and staff, with a series of live musical performances that they had been working on throughout the Winter term.

Clinical Support

The Clinical Services Team provides specialist clinical input and support to all Iris Care Group services.

As Health and Care Professional Council registered staff, the team comprises Clinical, Forensic and Counselling Psychologists, Occupational Therapists, Speech and Language Therapists, Physiotherapists, Dieticians and Music, Arts, and Drama therapists.

Iris Care Group’s Ethics and Safeguarding Lead and Mental Health Act department also sit within the Clinical Services Team.

Iris Care Group provides services for people with the most complex needs, and our extensive multidisciplinary team provides comprehensive clinical input that accords with NICE guidelines.

Since forming Iris Care Group, the priorities for our Clinical Services Team have been:

• Patient safety: ensuring that the team promotes and implements evidence-based approaches to patient safety in line with NHS Wales, NHS England, and Social Care Wales standards.

• Clinical Effectiveness: ensuring that the team uses outcomes measures for all clinical intervention.

• Reducing restrictive practices: continuing to drive down the use of all forms of restrictive practice and restraint in all Iris Care Group services.

• Co-production: working alongside the people we support, and ensuring that we take a partnership approach to all clinical development and service provision.

• Culture: supporting healthy cultures of care in all Iris Care Group services

Promoting learning and Development across Iris Care Group

In 2023 the clinical team developed and supported a new patient safety campaign – “See it, Say it, Send it”. The campaign incorporates the principles of ‘Safety II’, learning from good practice. The campaign encourages an environment where everyone feels comfortable to tell each other when things are going well, and when things can be improved, to ensure we are providing the best practice care and keeping the people we support safe.

Our Ethics and Safeguarding Lead also produces a safeguarding thematic report each quarter, providing an overview of safeguarding themes across the group to spread learning and trend information with all staff in the group.

At Heatherwood Court, the hospital’s Speciality and Associate Specialist (SAS) Doctor has developed a series of training protocols and safety drills to further prepare staff for emergency situations,

including choke management training and emergency medical equipment training.

The clinical team has also developed a new staff training workbook – Human Factors and Professional Boundaries – to support staff members to understand the human factors issues that can impact on care delivery when working with people with very complex needs.

‘See it - Say it - Send it’ encourages an environment where everyone feels comfortable to tell each other when things are going well, and when things can be improved, to ensure we are providing the best practice care and keeping the people we support safe.

Knowledge sharing

Our Clinical Director recently published an article in the Health Service Journal – When commissioning priorities meet clinical reality – examining the systemic challenges that arise when commissioning complex community placements for individuals with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour.

Our Clinical Director has also produced a series of papers that explore the use of generative artificial intelligence in mental health care, which are currently in peer review.

In 2023, our Clinical Director also presented at the Royal Society of Medicine conference on the topic of clinical outcomes using our bespoke recovery model RISE, with a focus on individuals with complex mental health needs moving from inpatient settings to our community services.

Four papers produced by our Clinical Services Team have also been accepted at the 2024 National Intellectual Disability Faculty Conference, including:

• Using Measures of Culture of Care in Complex Settings to improve quality and safety

• Navigating the challenges of complex discharge planning in forensic ID populations

• Initial reports from a large-scale evaluation of outcome measures across multi-site residential care services from people with a learning disability and challenging behaviour

• Two Worlds – The Crisis in Challenging Behaviour Commissioning

Relaunching RISE, our bespoke recovery model

RISE is the way that Iris Care Group services deliver evidencebased approaches to mental health recovery. It was created by our Clinical Services Team, in partnership with the people we support, to ensure that all individuals in our services are supported by staff who are trained to help people with the most complex needs, and who know how to provide relational support to people who may have had negative experiences previously of mental health care.

In 2023 the team conducted a full review of all RISE recovery planning documents, and they are relaunched the programme with expanded materials in 2024.

Advancing health and social care

Our Clinical Director was invited to speak at the International Association for the Study of Intellectual Disability’s webinar series on the topic of reducing the use of restraint in health and social care settings, presenting ‘Rhetoric and reality – staff training, belief change, and restrictive practice’ to professionals internationally.

The Clinical Services Team also collected and presented core outcome data for all of our community services in Wales at the All Wales Challenging Behaviour Community of Practice (CBCoP) in 2023, sharing learnings to support the development of sector-wide best practice.

St Peter’s Speciality Doctor was also elected as the official SAS Neuropsychiatry Representative for the Royal College of Psychiatrists, holding office for the next four years.

Pinetree Court Hospital’s Consultant Clinical Psychologist is the Welsh Representative of the British Psychological Society’s Division of Clinical Psychology Faculty for People with Intellectual Disability. They are continuing this role in 2024, as well as their role as the Editor for the Bulletin of the Faculty of People with Intellectual Disabilities

They are also a member of the Welsh Government’s Improving Lives programme, alongside our Clinical Director, covering the use of non-pharmacological interventions for challenging behaviour, and timely transitions from hospital to community settings.

In collaboration with other members of the Clinical Services Team, they have both provided extensive input towards the Welsh Government’s new policy paper on the use of non-pharmacological interventions for challenging behaviour, which is due to be released for public consultation in 2024.

Andrew Hilder presenting at Govconnect, 2023

Our new webinar series for Health and Social Care Professionals

In 2023 we launched a new series of webinars hosted by different professionals from our Clinical Services Team. In these webinars we share results and learnings from initiatives across Iris Care Group, as well as evidence-based practice guidance, and information about projects that our teams are contributing to in the wider health and social care sector.

The team have already hosted webinars on differing topics including restraint reduction and human rights, with more to come in 2024.

Mental Health Act

Our Mental Health Act Manager has been working closely with regional Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) Coordinators to create an organisation-wide database of individuals that we support with MAPPA, which has improved oversight of our MAPPA obligations at an organisational level.

In collaboration with our Clinical Director and one of our Trainee Forensic Psychologists at Heatherwood Court Hospital, the Mental Health Act Team have also finalised a new MAPPA Standardised Operating Procedure to further improve Iris Care Group’s compliance with public protection procedures.

Thank you all so much for making me feel valued enough to make me feel that I could make changes to my life that are sustainable and will ensure a better quality of life for the future.

Our Mental Health Act Manager is also running quarterly Mental Health Act Q&A sessions at Heatherwood Court, providing patients with the opportunity to ask questions, raise concerns, and develop their understanding of the Mental Health Act.

Former patient, Heatherwood Court Hospital

Quality

Led by our Head of Quality, the Quality Team is responsible for managing quality outcomes across Iris Care Group. This includes auditing our services and operational processes, as well as creating action plans, setting goals for improvement, and conducting periodic reviews to track progress and resolutions.

As an organisation we have developed a robust set of quality outcomes that are constantly monitored and reviewed by the Quality Team, including: safety, clinical effectiveness, risk management across pathways of care, intervention, and provision.

The team also oversees key areas of our operations including RIDDOR, data protection, infection prevention and control, and investigation and incident management.

Team update

We created a new role – Quality Lead for Hospitals – in 2023, supporting our operational teams with governance, quality, and patient safety processes. We are also appointing a new role in Spring 2024, Quality Assurance Lead, who will support our Supported Living team.

We have appointed a Quality Project Manager to oversee the implementation of Nourish, our new electronic care planning system, and we are looking forward to welcoming a new Health & Safety Assistant to the team who will be supporting our Supported Living homes and Specialist Nursing Care service in England.

The Head of Quality has also been appointed as Iris Care Group’s designated Speak Up Guardian, supporting our staff to raise concerns and working with external whistleblowing agencies.

Quality and Assurance

Our services undergo regular quality assurance visits from our Head of Quality and our Quality Lead. These visits audit our services against external regulation standards from governing bodies, including Health Inspectorate Wales and Care Inspectorate Wales, the Quality Assurance Improvement Service, Estyn, and the Care Quality Commission.

The team also provides supervision and training relating to clinical needs, which includes revalidation, medication management, immediate life support, first aid, and airway management.

Digitising our care planning system

In September 2023 we began integrating Nourish, a cloud-based digital care planning system, into all of our services. This new digital system can be tailored to the individual needs of each person we support,

The Whispers Forum

The Quality Team has been working with individuals from our Supported Living homes to establish The Whispers Forum, a new self-advocacy initiative that enables us to improve our homes in collaboration with the people we support.

The team created a Quality Checker for the forum, providing a series of Easy Read audit questions designed to help people communicate their feelings and opinions about their homes and the care that they receive.

and it allows our teams to record information instantly at the point of care using handheld devices. This organisation-wide project has had our multidisciplinary teams working with the Quality Project Manager to standardise key documentation in all of our services, whilst designing bespoke forms and tracking methods tailored to the individual needs of each person we support.

The new system is already proving to be effective, enabling our care teams to provide more granular detail about the support they are providing, and it is allowing our managers to generate data-rich reports to identify areas where care can be further tailored and improved.

Nourish has already gone live in 26 of our services, and we are on target to digitise our care planning systems in all of our services by July 2024.

Health and Safety

The Health & Safety Team work closely with the operations teams to identify areas of risk, and to ensure that our environments are safe and compliant with the most up-to-date health and safety legislation.

In 2023, the Health & Safety Team conducted 60 H&S audits in all of our Welsh services. Each service was audited three times to ensure that the environments were safe for the people we support and our staff, and they will be conducting similar audits in our English services throughout 2024.

For the 23/24 period, our incident data shows downward trends in both our Residential Homes, and our SEN College. The team are currently working with our care support staff to identify how they can further reduce incidents by improving environments and mitigating specific areas of risk with new protocols and PPE.

60 Health & Safety Audits

In 2023, we conducted 60 Health & Safety audits in our Welsh services

Environmental Sustainability Plan

The Health & Safety Team has developed a new Environmental Sustainability Plan to improve our sustainability practices across Iris Care Group. The plan sets short, medium, and long-term environmental and sustainability goals, and the Health & Safety Team is working collaboratively with teams across Iris Care Group to achieve these goals.

Our short-term goals include a number of smallscale operational changes, such as improving our recycling and waste management facilities and promoting greener transport options to our teams.

Our medium to long-term goals encompass larger projects, which will include adding electric vehicles to our fleet to reduce our emissions, as well as adding solar panels to all of our services by 2034 to greatly reduce our carbon footprint.

Expanding our Commercial Activities

Business Development highlights

To reflect our new complete pathway of services, in 2023 considerable thought and energy was directed towards optimising our communications with commissioners and processes for managing our external relationships and the end-to-end referral to admission process.

We implemented a new central CRM system, Salesforce, which ensures all our commissioners contacts have been brought together and are managed consistently. Much work has been done to create a comprehensive database and optimise our contact strategy and we continue to grow and develop our customer relationships.

The Commercial Team has also appointed a dedicated Placement Coordinator for each division to ensure efficient and consistent referrals management.

We developed new systems and processes from referral to admission including new assessment documentation; implementing new funding confirmation forms and package change request forms, and introducing new decline ratification processes, whilst also ensuring that all operational managers were fully trained on these new processes.

We have undertaken a complete market analysis, considering the needs of our commissioners and determining how we should promote our service strengths and outcomes, and identifying where there might be opportunities to grow our services.

To deliver our ambitious growth agenda going forward we have appointed a new Head of Capital Projects to develop new services to meet local demand.

Iris Care Group partners with the Cardiff Devils

In 2023 we became official corporate sponsors of The Cardiff Devils, an awardwinning international ice hockey team based in South Wales.

The Cardiff Devils have supporters across the UK, so we tested this new partnership to boost visibility of our new organisation and to promote the rewarding career opportunities we are able to offer.

To celebrate our new partnership, some of the people we support and staff visited the Vindico Arena to meet the Cardiff Devils and have their picture taken on the ice!

Marketing highlights

2023 was extremely busy for the Marketing Team. Building on core skills whilst utilising new AI technologies, they delivered a wide range of projects to support all areas of the business.

In consultation with staff and the people we support, the team lead a rebranding project which saw us launch a competition to rename the group, develop a new brand identity, and completely redesign and reprint all of the organisation’s branded collateral.

Other major projects included a complete redevelopment of the website, expansion of the social media channels and the introduction of a blog programme, and the launch of an online Wellness Hub for staff.

The team has created a regular series of e-communications for our commissioners sharing updates from around the services, produced new video tour assets, and launched and manager a regular webinar programme.

The team has expanded the annual staff survey to include quarterly mini surveys. After feedback from staff that they didn’t feel they knew enough about what went on around the organisation, our quarterly newsletter has been enhanced and regular monthly mailings and vlogs introduced.

They launched the first ever Iris Care Group Staff Awards in 2023. The awards were a huge success with nearly 10% of our staff being nominated, and a really fun awards presentation night. They are currently developing parallel awards for the people we support.

10%

Nearly of staff were nominated at our Staff Awards in 2023

10% Increased referrals by Increased our customer base by Added 3000 new contacts to our CRM, Salesforce In 23/24, the Commercial Team: 37%

People Development

Our People Team comprises all of Iris Care Group’s employee support functions, including Human Resources, Recruitment, Learning and Development, and Wellbeing.

Iris Care Group aims to be the employer of choice in the health and social care sector. We want our teams to feel valued and appreciated for the incredible work that they do, and to love coming to work every day. Throughout 23/24, the People Teams have introduced a range of new initiatives to improve our organisational culture and expand our staff benefits.

Team updates

In 2023 we appointed Yvonne Murray as our Group People Director, a new role that we created following the merger to support the development and wellbeing of our staff across Iris Care Group.

We also appointed a new Head of Learning and Development to oversee the professional development of our staff and teams, and to design and deliver new staff training programmes and initiatives, as well as a dedicated HR Wellbeing and Projects Officer to support the implementation of new organisation-wide wellbeing initiatives.

A new role was later created within our Recruitment Team – International Recruitment Advisor – to further support and strengthen our visa sponsorship and compliance processes.

Listening to our staff

It is important to us as an organisation that our staff feel valued and have their voices heard. We wanted to provide more opportunities for our staff to communicate their opinions and to contribute to our organisational development, so in 2023 we launched a new series of Staff Forums.

Staff Forums are conducted quarterly in each service, providing our staff with a platform to share their feedback and raise concerns about their specific service. Following each Staff Forum, an action plan is created to address any concerns and implement new ideas and initiatives that are generated.

To ensure that our new staff members feel supported and confident in their roles, we have introduced new check-ins at both the three-month and six-month mark for all new starters. These check-ins provide our staff with opportunities to identify additional training or support they may require and ensures that they are fully supported within their early months.

First Annual Iris Care Group Staff Survey

In our first annual Staff Survey since forming Iris Care Group, we were delighted to see that many of the results were already showing improvements from previous staff surveys conducted by our former organisations Ludlow Street Healthcare and

90% enjoyed their role

In our 2023 Staff Survey, 90% of our staff agreed that they enjoyed their role

Holmleigh Care Homes. We received some excellent feedback and interesting insights from our staff, and our focus now is to continuously improve upon these results and to increase staff satisfaction levels.

Our Executive Team has conducted a full review of survey outcomes and developed an action plan to address any areas of improvement.

96% of our staff felt comfortable that they understood their safeguarding responsibilities

89% 88% of our staff believe that the work of Iris Care Group positively impacts the lives of the people we support

of our staff feel that Iris Care Group is dedicated to diversity and inclusiveness

92% of our staff said they understand how Iris Care Group monitors safety in each service, including the use of restraint and deprivation of liberty

To further our commitment to elevating the voices of our staff, we have also introduced quarterly pulse surveys across all of our services. These mini surveys are designed to provide our staff members with opportunities to share their views and to contribute to our decision-making on an organisational level. The surveys are conducted organisation-wide, as well as in individual services and divisions, enabling us to create targeted surveys that collect staff feedback on specific operational initiatives.

New staff benefits

Our People Team has been working hard to expand our staff benefits package with a series of new health, wellbeing, and financial services initiatives.

All Iris Care Group staff now have access to an Employee Assistant Programme (EAP). The EAP provides confidential 24/7 support for our staff in a range of different areas including legal advice, bereavement support, and online cognitive behavioural therapy.

In addition to the EAP all staff now have access to Wisdom, the EAP’s companion mobile app that offers a live support chat, personalised health and wellbeing news, a weekly mood tracker and monthly wellbeing plans.

We introduced RecogniseMe in 2023, a new staff recognition platform that enables our staff to shout out good practice and nominate their colleagues for special recognition awards.

RecogniseMe also provides our staff with an extensive suite of additional benefits, including financial advice, health and wellbeing support, and retail discounts.

In 2024, we made Wagestream available to all Iris Care Group staff. Wagestream is a financial wellbeing app that provides our staff with an extensive and easy-to-use toolkit of financial products and services. The platform was founded to help frontline workers access fairer, more inclusive financial products and services built around pay, including savings pots, flexible pay drawdown options and a benefits checker.

I have gained invaluable experience and met so many amazing people along the way! I will carry the lessons I have learned from Iris Care Group through the rest of my career.

We have also extended our employee life assurance scheme so that all staff groups are covered, and our benefits app provides staff with the opportunity to subscribe to an Employee Healthcare Cash Plan, a Plan4life cancer cover, and a Pay4Sure sickness cover should they wish to do so.

We are keen to be as inclusive as possible, so we have reviewed our flexible and hybrid working policies, created team building events for different staff groups, and actively seek ways in which we can include the people that we support in those initiatives.

In December 2023, we launched our inaugural Annual Staff Awards ceremony, combining this with Long Service Awards. This event enabled colleagues from across the Iris Care Group to come together to celebrate some of the great work that we do.

Since we launched RecogniseMe, our staff have made 548 nominations!

Former Staff Member, Heatherwood Court Hospital

Peter Kinsey (left) & Jason Batten (right), ICG Staff Awards 2023

Learning and Development

Our new Head of L&D came into role with high levels of enthusiasm and innovation. We now have a burgeoning Leadership and Management Development Programme, including a series of site-specific boot camps. Training compliance consistently runs at over 90% - and we aim for 100% at all times. Continuing professional development (CPD) days are now increasing across a wide range of teams.

Wellbeing

One of our key focus areas following the merger was to improve staff wellbeing. To support these efforts, we have created a new online Wellbeing Hub which provides our staff with a suite of helpful tools and resources to better manage their health and wellbeing. The new hub offers support in a range of different areas including physical and mental health, and financial wellbeing.

We also launched the ‘Self-Care Toolkit’ to further support our staff to develop strategies and techniques improve their health and wellbeing.

The toolkit provides guidance for building a daily self-care routine and creating emergency selfcare plans and can be used in conjunction with other bespoke resources that we have created to support staff wellbeing like our ‘Physical Health MOT’, ‘Wellbeing Conversation Guides’ and ‘Bitesize Video Guides’ (to be launched soon).

Additional support and resources are also available for all of our staff in our new Your Support Resources directory, and the HR Team routinely refers people for Occupational Health support.

Our dedicated HR Wellbeing and Projects Officer also delivers organisation-wide wellbeing initiatives, providing helpful resources and engaging activities for all Iris Care Group staff including:

• Wellbeing Wednesdays, weekly recipes, workouts, and healthy living tips to promote health and wellbeing.

• Awareness days for local and international events

• Overseas Welcome Pack to support overseas workers across our organisation as they adjust to life in the UK.

• Individualised wellbeing support for specific services and staff members

• Team bonding and staff culture activities and materials

• Bespoke, easy-to-use recipe book to promote healthy eating for our staff and the people we support.

We constantly review and refresh our wellbeing offering to ensure that it is relevant and reflective of industry best practice. Future initiatives include the further development of in-house First Aid and Mental Health First Aid Champions.

Our new Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Networks

When we formed Iris Care Group we committed to creating a new Equality, Diversion, and Inclusion strategy, and in 2023 we launched three new EDI Networks to support this. Led by three executive sponsors from our Leadership Team, the networks bring staff members from across our services together to promote diversity and help us make Iris Care Group an inclusive place to work.

The Accessibility & Disability Network

Executive sponsor: Helen Leigh

This network serves as a cornerstone for promoting awareness, understanding, and support for individuals with varying abilities and neurodivergent traits within the workforce.

The Multicultural Network

Executive sponsor: Peter Kinsey

This network aims to create an environment where everyone feels valued and that their strengths and talents are utilised. One of the aims of the Multicultural network is to increase cultural awareness and understanding.

The Pride Network

Executive sponsor: Michelle Cox-Coley

This network provides peer-to-peer support, raise awareness on LGBTQ+ inclusion, advises on processes and policies to create a more inclusive environment at Iris Care Group.

Learning and Development

When we formed Iris Care Group we committed to nurturing the continuous growth and development of our workforce, and in 2023 we appointed a new Head of Learning and Development to support these efforts. Our staff empower the people we support to live their best lives every day, and our goal is to equip our teams with the right knowledge and skills to provide exceptional care and support.

Enhancing our induction process

Our extensive induction process is designed to prepare our staff members to deliver outstanding, person-centred care, and our aim is to continuously innovate and improve our induction process to reflect industry best practice.

To support these efforts, experts in a range of different disciplines across Iris Care Group contribute to our induction programme, developing bespoke learning modules and providing expert guidance to support our staff to develop the necessary skills to deliver excellent care.

New series of Leadership Bootcamps

Our induction programme is in a constant state of review to ensure that, as an organisation, we are delivering learning and development that aligns with industry best-practice, and that we are providing our staff with the most relevant and up-to-date information and guidance.

In-house physical intervention training

Iris Care Group offers an industry-leading, in-house physical intervention programme, delivered by an experienced team of physical intervention trainers with 38 years of collective experience in this field.

Our physical intervention training compliance exceeds the mandatory requirements for Wales, and our aim is to achieve 100% training compliance across all of our roles in 24/25.

As a further testament to the effectiveness of this programme, this bespoke training has contributed to a decrease in the use of restrictive interventions across all of our services as part of our ongoing restraint reduction programme. We have seen a decrease of more than 75% in restrictive interventions in Iris Care Group’s Welsh services in the last 3 years” (2020-2023).

In 2023 we launched a new series of Leadership Bootcamps, supporting our staff to professionally develop and progress into more senior roles with bespoke training courses.

Staff participating in a Leadership Bootcamp, Beechwood College

Enhancing Learning and Development across Iris Care Group

We have expanded our Learning and Development catalogue with a range of new training programmes that are designed to empower our staff to deliver excellent care and to develop professionally. This includes a new series of Leadership Development initiatives – including leadership bootcamps and managers’ progression workshops - which we have introduced to nurture and develop emerging leaders within our teams.

We have already launched these bootcamps for staff at Beechwood College and in our residential homes and received exceptional feedback after completion, with staff sharing that they feel more prepared to assume senior roles. We are currently in the process of adapting these bootcamps for staff members in our Supported Living services in England.

Our Learning and Development Team in England has increased the number of workshops and courses they are able to deliver to provide our staff with further training and professional development opportunities. Workshops include important topics like creating support plans, writing regulatory reports, and conducting staff supervisions, and we will continue to expand our Learning and Development catalogue throughout 24/25.

Bespoke online learning

Our hybrid approach to staff training combines our traditional in-person training courses with an extensive suite of bespoke online learning courses.

97% staff training compliance in Wales

32 bespoke online learning modules are currently available for our staff, with plans to further expand these modules with new topics and courses to meet the changing needs of the people we support.

We are also developing bitesize online learning modules to support further learning, and to provide short refresher courses to ensure our staff are always following the most up-to-date guidance.

97% of our staff in Wales are currently compliant with their mandatory online learning which includes modules such as Safeguarding Adults, and Infection Prevention and Control, and our goal is to hit 100% training compliance for all staff by 2025.

96% staff training compliance in England

When we formed Iris Care Group, training compliance for our staff in England was at 92%.

Our Learning and Development Team in England has been hard at work to improve this figure, and we are delighted to share that, as of Spring 2024, this has increased to 96% compliance with further plans to improve upon this.

To support further ongoing professional development across our services, all nurses and senior support staff across the group have been provided with access to RCNi Learning, the Royal College of Nursing’s online learning hub. RCNi Learning features 175 interactive learning modules across 43 different specialties, with peer-reviewed content provided by industry experts to ensure courses reflect current best practices.

Our induction programme is in a constant state of review to ensure that, as an organisation, we are delivering learning and development that aligns with industry best-practice...

What’s next?

We are committed to ensuring that all of our staff members – regardless of their current level of ability or seniority – have access to extensive opportunities to develop their careers. To facilitate this we are developing a new Skills Escalator Framework, which will put us in a stronger position to produce more multi-skilled workers and to further develop the career pathways we are able to offer. This framework will support staff across Iris Care Group to develop the skills that they need to progress into specific roles, and to gain the knowledge that they need to progress to more senior roles with confidence.

These workshops provide a platform for leaders from our services to help shape the future of our organisation...

Supporting our staff to develop the right skills for their chosen career path has also improved our organisation-wide resources, as a large portion of our staff have completed additional training and developed the necessary skills to step in to a number of different roles as required.

As an organisation we embrace social learning and opportunities to knowledge-share, so we launched a new series of Managers Networking Events in 2023/24 which has brought senior team members from across the group together to share their learnings and expertise.

These workshops provide a platform for leaders from our services to help shape the future of our organisation, and in our Winter 2023 workshop we further expanded our Iris Care Group Annual Plan using insights from these workshops. More workshops are planned throughout 2024/25.

Plans are also in place for Senior Medical staff and Nursing staff from across Iris Care Group to deliver in-house First Aid training for our teams, with the goal of increasing the number of qualified first aiders in all of our services, and to ensure that first aid is readily available for anyone who may need it.

We are committed to innovation, and plan to integrate more technology-driven learning platforms into our Learning and Development processes throughout 24/25 to make training and professional development opportunities more accessible for our staff.

Service Improvements & Our Estates Team

The Estates Team supports all of our services across England and Wales. Lead by our Head of Estates, the team are instrumental in creating safe and homely environments that are tailored to the needs of the people we support.

Since forming Iris Care Group, our Estates Team has been working hard to update and improve our existing services and create new, industry-leading developments in collaboration with our new Capital Projects Team.

Team update

The team has grown to 26 members as of 2024, expanding the team’s inhouse capabilities with new roles including Groundskeepers, a Plumbing and Gas Engineer, and Capital Project Officers.

Our Estates leadership team has also grown. We have appointed an Estates Office Manager to support the team with compliance, purchasing, fleet management and operations. In addition, we have also appointed an Estates Work Manager to support our Maintenance Officers with service improvements and projects across all of our services.

We have also welcomed an Estates Manager for our English services, managing estates projects in our Supported Living homes as well as Pirton Grange, our Specialist Nursing Care Service.

Investing in our services

In 2023, the Estates Team invested over £370,000 in maintenance projects in our Specialist Nursing Care and Supported Living services in England. These projects have centred around upgrading our existing facilities and creating industry-leading environments that minimise environmental risks for the people we support.

The team has also invested over £290,000 to upgrade the facilities in our Hospitals, Residential Homes, and SEN College in Wales, and will be continuing this investment with new developments and improvements scheduled throughout 2024 and 2025.

Implementing new systems

The Head of Estates implemented Infraspeak in 2023, a new Computer-aided Facilities Management (CAFM) software. This new system has enabled the team to gain greater control of their logistics and operating costs, as well as increase their efficiency and improve internal processes.

Wentwood Court Flat renovation

New kitchen at Hunters Moon

Infraspeak has also enabled the team to assign our Maintenance Officers to specific services, minimising disruption for the people we support by ensuring that they have the same Maintenance Officers working consistently in their homes.

We have also increased our capacity for both planned and reactive maintenance to ensure that our homes and services are well-maintained and compliant with the latest safety regulations and legislation.

Since launching Iris Care Group in May 2023, our Estates Team has:

16 Installed new kitchens

26 Installed & upgraded new bathrooms

Upgraded the décor and furnishings in more than of our homes

70

Denmark House flat renovation

New Developments

Since forming Iris Care Group, we have begun developing new bespoke environments to improve the lives of the people we support. These projects encompass additions and improvements to our existing services, as well as the acquisition of new sites.

Our key focus is on developing single occupancy accommodation for individuals who have difficulty living in communal settings; providing them with safe, comfortable, and homely environments that are tailored to their individual needs.

Juniper Studio

In March 2024 we opened Juniper Studio, a new self-contained flat at Pinetree Court Hospital and the first in a series of bespoke developments. Following the completion of this successful new service, we are excited to shared that, in Summer 2024, we will be opening two more self-contained flats at Pinetree Court Hospital.

Our aim is to ensure our new environments become the benchmark for future schemes.

Nick Todd, Head of Capital Projects

Our new Head of Capital Projects

In 2023 we established a new role – Head of Capital Projects - to lead on new developments across Iris Care Group. The Head of Capital Projects is responsible for designing and developing bespoke environments, acquiring new sites, and liaising with stakeholders.

Working collaboratively with our Operations Teams, Estates Team, and external contractors, the Head of Capital Projects provides support at every stage of the process including registering new developments with external regulators, and ensuring staff are trained to operate the new facilities.

Industry-leading environments

Each new development is designed to be comfortable, homely, and personalised, whilst also minimising risk and the need for restrictive staff intervention. Environments are furnished with robust, weighted furniture to minimise environmental damage, and anti-tamper and antiligature fixtures to further reduce risk.

Success Stories

Achieving a lifetime goal

In our Supported Living homes, one of the people we support had expressed to the team that they would like to learn how to write.

To help them meet their goal, the team supported them to visit a local shop and buy an exercise book for reading and writing. They have been working through this book together and have been making amazing progress. Starting with singular letters, they have been working up to full words, with the goal of eventually being able to write full sentences independently.

From Pirton Grange to Cardiff Castle

One of the individuals we support at Pirton Grange had been working on improving their mobility with an external Physiotherapy Assistant through a series of cycling activities.

They had made great progress but then expressed that they were losing motivation, so a new cycling goal was suggested – to cycle from Pirton Grange to Cardiff Castle. With a big journey (totalling 145km) ahead of them they created a cycling chart together to help stay motivated, marking significant distance milestones with different towns along the route.

Supported by Pirton Grange’s in-house Physiotherapy Team and Activities Coordinator, they officially started on 16th February 2024, and completed their journey on 9th April 2024 they covered the full 145km in just 11 sessions!

In each session, they also took great pride in setting new record distances in each session!

This was an amazing feat, and when asked about how they felt following this achievement, they said “I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon!”.

Their next goal is to journey along the Welsh coast until they reach Aberystwyth, the town where they grew up. This journey will be 507km, and they have marked the distance with Welsh castles that they loved to visit with their family when growing up.

A dream come true

Fantastic volunteering achievement

Our teams work hard to provide opportunities for the people we support to gain work experience and develop their employability skills, and they have developed strong links with both local and national employers to support this.

For the past 3 years, this individual who lives in one of our Residential homes has been volunteering with SCOPE, a disability charity that operates in England and Wales.

Working in one of their South Wales branches, they volunteer full-time hours up to five days a week. Their daily responsibilities

The William Street Flats team noticed that one individual was spending a lot of their free time watching old videos of Concorde airplanes. When the team asked them why they kept revisiting these videos, they explained that they’d seen the Concorde at their old home almost 20 years ago, and wished they could see it in person again.

That was all the William Street team needed to hear! The team immediately got to work planning a special trip to Aerospace Bristol to see one of the few Concordes still in the UK.

They supported the individual to travel from Swindon to Bristol by train, and when they arrived at Aerospace Bristol, everyone was amazed to get up close with the Concorde.

When asked how they felt about the experience, they described it all as “unbelievable” – loving travelling by train, visiting Bristol, and getting to see the Concorde airplane in all its former glory! They also shared that they were really happy, and excited to visit again in the future.

include inventory and stock management and supporting the general operations of the shop, as well as working on the tills and delivering customer service.

They have been working hard to develop their independent living skills and increase their independence, and they are now able to travel independently to their workplace both on foot and via public transport.

They really love their volunteering role and are considered a valued member of the team at the shop. They have also developed valuable new skills that will enable them to succeed in the workplace and the community in the future.

First exhibition for Beechwood College Photography students

We introduced Photography into the Beechwood College curriculum in 2023 following feedback from the students about the types of subjects that they would like to study. Throughout the year the students completed a diverse range of Photography projects, exploring both modern and traditional photography techniques to develop their skills.

Creative career opportunities

One of the individuals that we support in our Residential homes loves animals, so the team always look for community opportunities for them that incorporate their interest particularly as their engagement with community activities can be inconsistent.

Having previously enjoyed volunteering with Cardiff Dogs Home as a dog walker, the team wanted to identify further work experience opportunities that would allow them to work with animals again.

In collaboration with our Occupational Therapy Team, the team arranged weekly volunteering sessions for them at Walnut Tree Farm.

The team at Pedal Power Cardiff – an inclusive cycling charity that runs regular sessions with Beechwood College students – saw the photography projects that the students had been working on and invited them to exhibit their work in the gallery space at their café.

The students were excited to be offered the opportunity to share their work with the public, so they worked together to create this fantastic exhibit. The students took full creative control, curating the exhibit with their favourite pieces from the term, and each student provided a write-up to explain their work and their creative process.

All of the students were incredibly proud of their work and themselves, and they told Beechwood’s Photography Lecturer that it felt like they had really achieved something in this subject.

After finishing their exhibit, the Lecturer said:

“It

has been lovely to see the students’ confidence and creative skills grow, and to see how much pride they all have in their work. This has been really special to experience with them, and the students really feel like they have achieved something in this subject”.

The initial sessions proved a huge success – and they are now planning to continue attending each week. This is an incredible achievement, and great progress towards increasing their engagement with community activities.

They particularly love to work with the donkeys, but also enjoy working with the different farm animals including cows, horses, and a bull. Their responsibilities include feeding the animals, helping with care, and keeping their enclosures clean … and they are doing a brilliant job!

Case Study

Margaret, a 57-year-old woman from South Wales with a history of childhood trauma, struggled with self-harm and emotional instability for over 20 years. Eventually diagnosed with Emotionally Unstable Personality Disorder, her condition led to suicidal behaviours and self-isolation.

Happy birthday Iris Care Group!

For the 1st anniversary of our new organisation, the people we support across all of our services made birthday cakes to celebrate.

While we didn’t get to taste them, the people we support assured us that they were all delicious!

Admitted to Heatherwood Court under the Mental Health Act, Margaret and her commissioners aimed for psychological and therapeutic support and a safe community discharge.

The hospital’s multidisciplinary team provided tailored therapy, including Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and smart goal planning, alongside involvement of her husband in her care. Margaret’s progress was remarkable; within four months, she was able to return home, feeling respected, supported, and empowered in her recovery. She rebuilt trust with her community team, engaged in further treatment, and started to conquer her social phobias, envisioning a happier future with her family. Margaret expressed gratitude that the team at Heatherwood made her feel valued and had enabled her to make sustainable life changes.

Awards

In our first year as Iris Care Group, we were incredibly proud to see our team members being celebrated across the wider health and social care sector in several industry awards.

We had more than 30 staff members and teams who were shortlisted, finalists, and winners this year, and we are excited to continue this upward trajectory as we continue to develop Iris Care Group and invest in our teams and services.

Our winners

In 23/24 our incredible team members won 7 different awards at The Great British Care Awards and The Stars of Social Care Awards!

Patrick McMahon Deputy Manager, Wentwood Court

The Frontline Leaders Award, Great British Care Awards Regional Finals

Tammy Rees Home Manager, Ty Brynteg

The Care Home Manager Award, Great British Care Awards Regional Finals

Anne Holland, Lesley Allen, Sabrina Nash Iris Care Group England

The Care Team Award, Great British Care Awards Regional Finals

Catherine Sweeney Tenancy Liaison Officer

The Ancillary Worker Award, Great British Care Awards Regional Finals

Michelle Cox-Coley Operations Director England

Outstanding Contribution to Social Care Award and The Frontline Leader Award, Great British Care Awards Regional Finals

Clare Harper Office Manager and Care Coordinator, Care at Home

The Awesome Administrator Award, The Stars of Social Care Awards

First Annual Iris Care Group Staff Awards

In December, we were proud to launch our first annual Iris Care Group Staff Awards. We asked our teams and the people we support to nominate the members of staff that they believe go above and beyond to deliver outstanding care, and we were delighted to receive more than 300 nominations across the organisation.

The Staff Awards were an amazing success, and we are looking forward to hosting our second Staff Awards in December 2024.

The People’s Awards launching in 2024

Our goal at Iris Care Group is to support the individuals in our care to live their best lives and achieve their goals, so we are excited to announce that this year, we will be launching The People’s Awards to recognise the incredible achievements of the people we support.

We have already received over 100 nominations from our staff, and we will be announcing the winners during a night of celebration at our first annual People’s Awards ceremony in June!

Iris Care Group’s Chair and Chief Executive wins CareTalk’s Social Care Top 30.

Peter Kinsey, our Chair and Chief Executive, won the prestigious Care Talk’s Social Top 30 in 2023. The Social Care Top 30 recognises excellence and leadership in the sector, and Peter won via the public vote.

Peter said:

“Whilst it has been humbling to win, I am delighted to have this opportunity to shine a light on the new Iris Care Group. We employ and support some amazing people and I’m very proud to lead the organisation.”