Jan Burns

Oh well been out and about again today, I had a wonderful day at Lancashire Workforce Development Partnership. The whole day dedicated to Dignity - what a fantastically well organised conference. I did my bit and loved it, such a receptive audience - well they laughed, ahh'd and drew sharp intakes of breath in the right places, all responses to my descriptive examples. Speakers and facilitators shared their thoughts and messages for learning - messages about: empathy, compassion - passion - active listening - the fact that dignity is a two way process. The fact that as workers we need to look after ourselves too - to remember not to invest so much in caring that we lose balance and forget to care for ourselves. The fact that shocked me was that one of the people who got the longest sentence from the Winterbourne trial was a DIGNITY CHAMPION!!! My message to all was please don't sign up as a champion if you can't uphold the ten point challenge - reminding everyone of number one - Zero tolerance of all forms of abuse!!! Rant over there is some fantastic work goes on in care/health services - there was over 100 people present today, all wanting to learn and to be as active champions as they can - its those that don't come forward that we worry about. Lets keep up our campaign you know it makes sense - onward and upward!!!!.