Jade’s* history

Jade is diagnosed with a mild learning disability, emerging emotionally unstable personality disorder and generalised anxiety disorder. As well as these, it is suspected that her challenging behaviours were a result of her disrupted upbringing.

Jade had a very difficult childhood, she lost one of her parents at a very young age and also suffered neglect and emotional and physical abuse. She had a number of unsuccessful foster placements and was bullied at school.

Jade had thoughts of ending her life and self-harming and was arrested on several occasions for causing criminal damage and assault to family members and neighbours.

When Jade came to us

Jade came to Cygnet Elms following a stay in a low secure unit. She was initially on 15 minute observations and her risks were self-harming, verbal aggression, flashbacks and hearing voices. Jade found certain situations anxiety-provoking and as a result would cause disruptive behaviour, self-harm and be verbally abusive towards the staff and her peers. She got easily annoyed by the other service users who were not following the rules, this provoked her disruptive behaviours.

Jade’s care

Jade was assessed by Cygnet Elms’ in-house multi-disciplinary team (MDT) to determine what care and treatment could be provided to best support her. The nursing team worked with Jade to educate her around her medication. By giving her the knowledge on what medication she was on and what dosage she needed, they worked with her to enable her to become independent in taking her medication as she now understands what it is for and the importance of taking it.

The occupational therapy team supported Jade to become more independent with her finances, going out/travelling and cooking and cleaning. They also set up an animal therapy group for Jade and the rest of the service users at Cygnet Elms, which she really enjoyed and always attended as she really likes animals. In addition, they worked with Jade on looking at what her interests were and supporting her with vocational work to determine what job she would like to do.

Jade worked closely with the speech and language team on learning how to express her emotions properly, working on her social skills and her relationships with those around her. The team provided easy read and other accessible material to help Jade understand situations that would have previously caused her excess anxiety.

The psychology team worked with Jade to create a person-centred positive behaviour support plan by looking at her likes and dislikes they were able to establish what worked best for her. She attended weekly psychology sessions and often would participate in the group psychology sessions with some of her peers.

Through multi-disciplinary working, the team not only supported Jade to a reduction in self-harm, they also helped her to become more independent, to regulate her feelings and emotions and develop her holistic health and well-being.

Jade today

Jade has progressed fantastically since arriving at Cygnet Elms, she has now achieved up to 8 hours of unescorted leave, become more independent with her finances and has just opened up a new bank account. Jade continues to use easy read documents when she doesn’t understand a situation and continues to work with the team to understand and manage her behaviours and emotions better and when she feels she is stressed or anxious she actively seeks support from the staff.

Jade is extremely proud of herself, she has used her travelling training to go to her home town and back independently. Jade is no longer sectioned under the mental health act and is currently waiting to move to supported living in her own house in the community.

Her days are currently spent shopping for new items to go into her new home and really looking forward to the future and becoming more independent.