Gemma Cooke is an Integrated Community Manager, employed by Derbyshire Community Health Services (DCHS), based in Chesterfield. Her role and responsibilities include managing the local rapid response services, community response team, the occupational therapy and physiotherapy rotational team, and the responsive nursing team for the Chesterfield and north-east Derbyshire localities.
What is your role within Team Up?
My role primarily covers managing the nursing and therapy services in and around Chesterfield and north-east Derbyshire. I joined in October 2019 and it was a new service at that point. We went live with the nursing element first before rolling out the therapy services rapid response team. In 2021 we started recruiting the community response carers as well - these provide personal care and reablement to patients in their own homes.
How has the work progressed so far?
I like the work and it has been going well so far. Many members of the team are still fatigued because of everything we have gone through - during the roll-out of this service, we’ve had a pandemic – but we’ve kept going. I have a really proactive team, which is beneficial, and this summer we have achieved gold standard accreditation as a service from the DCHS quality team, who measured us against the Care Quality Commission standards. That was really positive in terms of where we are and where we’re moving towards. There’s a lot going on and there are always new developments like the virtual wards programme, so there are always things to learn and improve.
How is the work of your team/service contributing to Team Up?
A lot of our work falls under ‘Team Up’. The main areas are the urgent community response and the home visiting services. We work closely with Chesterfield Royal and Derbyshire County Council in terms of hospital admission, avoidances and facilitation of hospital discharges. Chesterfield has also been one of the pilot areas for the enhanced falls recovery programme and we have had shared learning from this for the whole of the county.
What are some of the challenges and opportunities you see for your team/service/Team Up?
The pressures of recovering from the Covid pandemic have been really challenging. In addition, estates is a challenge and so we’re doing lots of work on how we can make sure the virtual element of our provision is in place to support staff from across organisations and the new staff coming in. Recruitment has always been a big challenge, nursing and therapy staff, and it took a long time to get to the position that we’re currently in.
In terms of opportunities, we now have the local navigation hubs, which were formerly known as local access points, and there is some work to do in helping the team understand how they need to access and develop this. We’ll get together and have some discussions around what we need to be doing and how we’re going to do it. We’ve developed the plan for falls recovery and enhanced falls recovery for Chesterfield and we’re still in the process of developing the plan for the north-east of Derbyshire. As previously said, we have the virtual wards as well and that is growing and we need to see how we can best contribute to that.
What are you most proud of in terms of your team/service/Team Up?
Completing the gold accreditation has been a real achievement. It wasn’t easy, there’s been a huge amount of work put in to get us to where we are. I’m also proud of the connections we’re developing with other services in Chesterfield and the north-east, and the team is heavily involved throughout that process.
How do you communicate change?
We have a big team as well – there’s 57 staff in just the rapid response team – and then I have 16 staff in this community response team. As it’s such a big team, we try to engage with everyone and engage different methods of communication. We do calls where we have updates and ask people to share the information.
Any messages for colleagues?
We’re all at different stages of progress within the localities of Derbyshire. So, I think it’s around making sure that other areas recognise that there may be some differences to what I’ve talked about. The concept is still the same, but the directions may be a little bit different, depending on where we are in the organisation.
And away from work, please tell us about your hobbies and interests.
What is your favourite…
Holiday destination: North America – I am in a lucky position to have family out there. We have been on several occasions and are going again this year. I think Niagara Falls is one of my favourite places there.
Film: I don’t tend to watch a lot of films as I always fall asleep. I am currently enjoying watching the Harry Potter films with my nine-year-old.
Book: The best book I’ve read in the last couple of years is The Secret Life of an Uncool Mum (Serena Terry).
Music: I tend to listen to music on Hallam FM.
Sport: I enjoy a bit of cricket; my little boy plays for a cricket team and I do a bit of scoring for the team. I also play soft ball cricket for the mums’ team.