Life can be so unpredictable, looking back to 3rd June 2010, I would have never imagined myself writing my thoughts down as the CEO of the CareMalta Group. Back then, I had joined CareMalta as the Financial Controller, the person that many times is looked at as the one who withholds finances and issues budgets, rather than the one who makes sure that we all receive our pay in time or the one who looks after our investments.
Just like anything I do in my life, I gave it all to the best of my abilities, always showing a vivid interest in how CareMalta was developing its operations and business model. Never stuck but always changing for the better, and this is in line with one of my beliefs, that to continue developing and to give your utmost every single day. At CareMalta we create a vision and update it as we go along but most of all we chase our dreams and work hard to achieve them – this was also the first toughest lesson I ever learned when at the age of 21, I lost one of my best friends, Mark.
Nowadays, I also believe that care was always part of me since I was young, growing up seeing my mother taking care every single day of my grandfather, whom he lived with us at home for the last 9 years of his life. 108 months of actively listening to stories, experiences, and creating memories with the person who has been an idol to me, my grandfather Pio. I am very grateful for those 3,285 days as I believe that I am where I am today thanks to the heart-warming, loving, and caring person my grandfather was. Even though he has been missing for 16 years, he still lives vividly in my heart and guides me in my life.
Fast forward to today, in this article I want to address a very specific topic, that of Ability in Care. Whenever I am to write about something, the first thing I tend to do is to split the title into parts. As a result, first and foremost one needs to understand to answer and understand two questions: ‘What is Ability?’ and ‘What is Care?’.
‘Ability’ is the knowledge, experience, and skill that an individual or group of people bring together to perform a particular task or activity. It also means the strength to accomplish something, both physically and mentally. ‘Care’ is the process of protecting someone and providing what a person needs, in his/her own home or in a specialised and dedicated environment which can help that person live a better life.
Once one understands and gets hold of the above meanings, the natural question is Caring with ability?
In this day and age, we are all discussing what is the context of care and how we can review care in the field of long-term care (LTC). However, we tend to limit our resolution of understanding to concepts that can be superficial to the needs and capacity of the care in its intrinsic sense. How many discussions are being set forward to review the relation of care and to what extent does the notion of care have potential? How can care be fundamental in what we do and how we do it? Whilst many discuss attributes of computation with a dimension of understanding in relation to care an in-depth review needs to start from connotations of defining the understanding of care.
So, we go back to simplistic evaluation which in turn is relative in its own sense. Relative to persons and context. This deliberation can only lead to the journey of striving for outcomes that foresee the narration of one’s life. We do not care unless we see persons and we cannot see persons unless we care. To consider each person is a key to success in how we express ourselves. Moreover, the expression of us is bigger than just a thought. We touch human lives in the multidimensional field of any care component. This led to conceptualising the idea of ability in care.
Consideration for Care
It is not just caring but being able to care. Ability in care can present challenges that are underestimated. We link with each other through the connections of the dimensions, be it physical, psychological, social, and spiritual. To be able and sustain care in the apprehension of gratitude and other naturalistic virtues is fundamental.
The ability in our service is purposely focused to seek and lead in attributing this ability and transmit this to our residents. We look out to give not only a service but an experience in the journey that we accompany our residents in our facilities. We see persons, no more no less, and it is upon us to ensure that our abilities are set and achieved. In each task, each moment, and touch we should be able to leave a mark. The mark of ability in care, the mark of human service, but above all the mark that we look at our residents as a priority above all.
Our duty at CareMalta is therefore to train and develop our employees in being able to care, meaning to be able to see the person in front of them. The moment we see the human being in front of us as a person, we are able to go to any length for his/her needs, meaning that we are able to care for that person, no matter the difficulties presented to us. At CareMalta we thrive to develop this ability in care as ultimately, we are all able to care for our residents and clients.
Next year CareMalta will be celebrating a very important milestone, the 30th Anniversary. Throughout all these years, CareMalta has developed the Care that we all know today, through a lot of hard work of hundreds of persons that have preceded us. More importantly, CareMalta was able to develop and give Care a new dimension, that of seeing the residents and clients as persons. This is Ability in Care and next year it will be a celebration of the person – the resident, the client, the relatives, and last but not least the person delivering the Care, the employees.