Creative Journeys Report 2019

38 Creative Journeys Spending time with them doing stuff they enjoy makes us happier, to see them actually having a good time, rather than sitting and being quite withdrawn themselves. (Stage two staff member) Many staff members had a positive attitude towards the arts and recognised their benefits for social relationships. I thought it would be a good idea getting everybody together. (Stage one staff member) Indeed, one member of staff who worked in the laundry normally had limited contact with the residents but took the opportunity to attend the Green Candle dance sessions and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, even coming in on her day off to attend. Because I’m stuck in the laundry room, I only get to see a few residents, the ones who go past my corridor. It was a way to get to see a bit more of the residents, especially the ones over in the dementia area. I don’t normally associate with them because I haven’t got a fob to go over there. Yes, so that was the reason why, really, and I do like dancing, I like music, so I thought, “Well, I’ll brave it, and do it. (Stage one staff member) This staff member described how coming to the sessions had helped her to get to know more of the residents and that as a result of the sessions she had more interactions with them. However, at the three month follow-up interviews in the home, she had changed jobs and was based in the administration office; one of the residents interviewed reported that they no longer saw her now that she was ‘enclosed’ in the office. Changing staff roles and high staff turnover in the residential care home settings is well documented and this can be a challenge for residents in maintaining social relationships with staff who are constantly moving on. 4.3.4 Barriers to resident and staff relationships Whilst it was found across the data that the arts activities had the power to help residents and staff to get to know each other better, and thus strengthen social bonds, there were also perceived to be barriers to this happening in both stages. For example, some of those interviewed in stage two did report that there were limited opportunities for conversation, interaction, and relationship building with wider care staff due to: heavy workloads; role divisions (with activities coordinators seen as having a more relational role and being solely responsible for activities, and care staff seen as purely providing physical care); timing of activities in terms of shift patterns (e.g. staff not being on shift at the same time each week or changing shifts in the middle of arts sessions). Some staff members would attend odd sessions and at times, negative staff attitudes from those who did not experience the whole process and perhaps did not fully understand the participatory approach led to negative/distracting behaviours in the sessions from those staff members. This was evident in the observations of a Green Candle session when one activities coordinator was unable to attend and the care staff member who took her place was not engaged and clearly uncomfortable with the activities, asking the other activities coordinator not to