This is a great story about a personal journey and what compassion looks like from the individual and caring staff’s perspective - The book by JAMES DOTY is called ‘INTO THE MAGIC SHOP’. It sets out the author’s lifelong journey and his research as a surgeon and professor of neuroscience in how compassion and kindness are critical to one’s mental and physical health and longevity. The power of relaxing the body, quieting the mind, opening the heart and visualising what he wanted to manifest. We can change our hearts and minds, transform them and use them for the benefit of all. Everyone has worth and should be treated with dignity and respect and deserve second chances.

We are all on a journey of connection as people want to find their place in the world and a transformative way to be content and happy. We need to move from ‘I’ to ‘ We’ and recognise that we are all connected. The small acts of compassion and kindness leads to other such acts, without which humanity cannot survive. Sometimes it only takes a smile or a kind word.

The alphabet of the heart suggested by Doty ends with l for love. He believes that It is through the power of love and compassion to cure human ills and in doing so see the face of God with the brain and the heart working together.

C = desire to relieve suffering of others

D = dignity innate in us all

E = equanimity or evenness of temperament even in difficult times

F = forgiveness is one of the greatest gifts to give to another

G = for the blessing your life is even with all the pain and suffering

H = humility needs practice, connection of our common humanity that helps us to open our hearts to care unconditionally

I = intentional behaviour based on practicing value-based behaviours

J = there lives in each of us a desire to see justice done

K = kindness is thought for others linked to compassion

L = love given freely changes people and everything it obtains all virtues and heals all wounds and holds our humanity

My colleague Patricia Duff OBE spent many years working on a framework and blueprint for compassion that is behaviourally specific, based on what users of services want. It was designed for both care homes and care agencies, showing what these behaviours look like from an operational client centred perspective. It is a whole system, client outcome-centred and relationship-activated framework which underpins all practice and service standards. We also wanted to develop a continuous improvement methodology and education programme that accompanies it- hence it took many years to develop and pilot.

The 360 SF CCS defines measurable outcome standards that exemplify and protect human rights in health and social care settings, and good practice for a person-centred culture embodying the requirements of positive relationships and empathetic communication. Here is an overview of the Community Care and Support version.

The 360 SF (CCS) aims to:

· Develop community health and social care support agencies to provide person centred care and support to people who use services in community settings.

· Support users of services in living their lives independently as valued members of the community in which they live, maintaining reciprocal and meaningful relationships.

· Include their family carers where both family member and family carer wish it.

· Enable staff to find the work fulfilling.

Benefits of the 360 SF are that it exemplifies policy drivers for delivering:

· Human Rights in care settings

· Empathetic communication

· Positive/collaborative relationships for person centred outcomes

· Demonstrable organisational commitment to Person Centred Culture

· Integration of health and social care through meeting customer focused outcomes

The 360 Standard Framework (360 SF CCS)

The 360 SF (CCS) comprises:

· A quality improvement and practice development methodology that helps managers and staff at all levels in all health and social care settings, and at all levels of organisation, to measure the quality of what they do from the separate but inter-related perspectives of the person using services, their families and carers

· A diagnostic assessment framework that shows health and social care organisations how to establish and maintain positive relationship based cultures in which the person using services experiences good care and support, family members feel included and supported and have confidence in the quality of care, and staff find the work fulfilling

· A quartet of four sets of inter-related outcome standards - for the user of services, their close family and staff exemplifying relationship activated care as measurable behaviours, and one set focussed on the essential dynamic of management enabling their adoption - that underpin all service and practice standards

The 360 SF underpins all service and practice standards

How the 360 SF helps care provider organisations:

· Promotes self-management of continuous quality improvement

· Facilitates analysis of training needs

· Is a blueprint for education and training in self–audit, diagnostic assessment, practice development and change management

· Helps care providers to meet CQC registration requirements

· Enables care organisations to demonstrate continuous improvement to regulators and service commissioners.

Fosters a person-centred culture shared by all where the service user/patient is the central player
Provides evidence-based means of measuring compliance with the 360 SF outcome standards and the measures of their achievement which can be understood and adopted by all staff.

Link to Community Care and Support Framework click here