Home Sweet Home: Queensberry

In January Persona welcomed customers to their new home at Queensberry. This was a new opportunity for Persona to bring a range of services to customers. We talked to Jackie Jackson, Support Coordinator for Queensberry about how the first 5 months have been.

The impact that it has had on customers was felt almost instantaneously "Barry and Anthony, moved from a old 4 bedroom terraced house on Walmersley Road with steep stairs, who present with specific behaviours moved and settled in very quickly. Within 7 hours of moving in it was as thought they have live here their whole lives."

The positive change in customers has also been noticed by social worker Lorraine who commented on Gerrard "on previous meetings he did not engage in any conversation and he was deteriorating, as such he was not engaging well with life. Now, he is a different gentleman. Sitting with staff laughing and joking, talking about how he would make a card for his girlfriend and wanting to send her flowers."

Looking towards the future, Jackie is very excited about the potential that Queensberry holds. "Summer is on our doorstep and we have all sorts of plans, these include : Sensory Garden, Planting out flowers that attract insects and birds into the garden so customers can enjoy the experience this brings, communal use of the garden space where we can hold BBQ’s, summer evenings in the garden. Customers have just started growing their sun flowers for our “biggest sunflower competition” their will also be in conjunction with day services hanging basket competition. We are also hoping that we can be involved in the local Allotment Society they have just had some renovations so that people around the community can utilise their space by making it wheelchair friendly, we are really excited about being able to access this.

We are hopeful once everyone has moved into to the building that we can focus on lots of community activity with people who live in our community and involve them in afternoon tea, bingo afternoons and seasonal fairs which we hope will help with our amenity fund, and in time allow us to start up our little pet’s corner."