Leuchie’s digital revolution has changed way we care for guests for the better - Stephen Pearson

My involvement with Scotland’s National Respite Centre, Leuchie House, is fast approaching a decade – and without doubt the past two years have been the most challenging for the charity, along with the rest of UK’s health and social care sector.

Stephen Pearson, Chair, Board of Directors, Leuchie House

The Covid pandemic tested us in ways we could never have before imagined and forced us to think differently. However, our amazing team and the people we support have faced up magnificently to the adversity and achieved incredible results.

I first got involved in Leuchie in 2014 when I was invited to one of the dinners enjoyed by guests at Leuchie at the end of their break. I sat with three gentlemen, roughly my age, all of whom were living with multiple sclerosis. It was humbling to realise that there is such a fine line between our normal lives, as we enjoy them, and our lives being suddenly turned upside down by a serious condition like MS, stroke or Parkinson’s.

I became a a trustee shortly after the dinner. While I quickly realised what an amazing place Leuchie is, I also learned how difficult it is to run a charity like Leuchie – because of the uncertainty around funding and the other challenges the care sector faces, such as staffing.

SMART technology used by guests at Leuchie House

When our inspirational CEO Mairi O’Keefe retired and was succeeded by Mark Bevan, one of the first things he talked about was completely reviewing our technology. The first reaction of the board was ‘we are not about technology we are about care’, but what Mark meant was that we needed to modernise. For example, we did not use digital tools in any shape or form, for staff or for guests. We were living almost in a Victorian-like care setting with wonderful care but very old-fashioned facilities.

From that point on, we brought in some hugely positive changes - for example moving from paper based care plans in an office to smart phones in every team member’s pocket. Going digital reduced administration time and enabled the care team to spend more team with the guests.

We were making great progress, but then Covid hit us. Everyone has their own lockdown Covid story but I am proud about how we managed to navigate our way through those troubled waters. Covid forced us to innovate and increased our ambition to do more, for more people.

For example, one of the guests, Bob, who has very limited physical movement below the neck explained that he could not watch TV at night, because he was put to bed by his carers at 7pm, woken up at 7 in the morning, and was lying in what he described as his ‘black hole’ for that period. It made us think we had the capability to enable Bob and others to have more control over their lives, using readily-available Alexa-type tools - enabling people to use voice commands to turn on and off the lights, their television, use their phone, and open and shut curtains or even answer their front door, without having to ask a family carer every time.

Covid actually gave us the breathing space to implement this change. We have added additional rooms, all of which are now SMART rooms, where our guests can learn how to use the technology and then, when they go home, the Leuchie team can help them and their carers to be enabled to have SMART technology in their homes.

It's been a huge success – so much so that we recently won the Digital Citizen award at the recent Scottish Charity Awards for this work.

I feel this is a brilliant example of our adversity being turned around, showing that some good was able to come out of the whole period of Covid and lockdown.

Stephen Pearson, Chair, Board of Directors, Leuchie House