Zena and Angela talk about the conditions that enable trust.

Trust needs time, this becomes possible by removing the barriers to engagement and recognising the opportunities to form relationship rather than fill out forms.

From creating space for every cup of tea to be alongside someone without expectation of conversation, creating culture where staff and residents always share meal times, closing the office at 5.00pm everyday to spending social time in the evening and knowing that it takes time.

They share a story of one gentleman who sat in the corner by themselves for months, didn’t share their name until one day they put their name on a volunteer list and is now a vibrant volunteer working 2 days a week.

Transcript:

 So tell me a bit more about what has worked in terms of building trust. What are the conditions that you are creating for that?

I think continuity.

Yeah. And I think because people haven’t engaged. To get somebody’s trust. You got to give them time. If you look at how much time you give somebody, rather than perhaps completing forms, so certainly at High Water House every opportunity we can get to have a cup of coffee with somebody, even if it’s just sitting next to them and they don’t want to engage at that point is great because they get used to us being in the room. We will not eat our meals separate from our residents. It’s all together. Teams, all the team eat with the residents.

We have no office after 5.00pm, it’s all closed, and we all go down to the activity room, sit and have a game of cards. Some might want to sit at the back and watch tv, but they get used. Some may not come in, they might look round the corner at first and think, okay and go, but the next night they might come in and they might just sit in that corner.

Then you can perhaps sit next to him having a game of cards. How are you? Where are you from? Start engaging in those conversations. But it is all about time. You have got to give people time and that can take months for people to engage.

We had one gentleman that used to come up here and he used to just walk in get a coffee from the machine, sit down with his head down, and he never spoke to anybody. It was difficult to even know his name. No one knew his name. And then one day I said, I’m gonna put out for some new volunteer members on the board. So I put up a poster and it who would like to be a volunteer member, and this particular chap put his name down.

We were all like, he’s put his name down, like surprised. Anyhow, so I spoke to him and we arranged for him to come and start doing volunteer membering. A week later, he came in, he went to the shop, he bought himself some new clothes, and he came in and to this day, he’s still working two days a week on the desk answering the phone, talking to everybody. In fact, he probably manages the place. He’s so good.

And I think it’s about that normality. We relax the professional image because they don’t respond well to professionals because usually they’ve had quite negative experiences.

So we do, it’s been friendly even though they’re not friends. When we listen, we’re just ourselves, so it’s not like they’ve been interviewed by someone. We all gel together. You could walk in and not know who is a team member. 

We don’t have uniforms.

It’s a little family unit.