Blue Triangle on practising a What Matters to You? approach
Colleagues from BTHA share a story of listening and acting on what mattered.
The Carer Voices project and National Lead for Caring and Outreach, Tommy Whitelaw, have been really lucky to work with colleagues at Blue Triangle (this link will take you away from our website) You can make a difference (Intelligent Kindness – What Matters to You?) sessions to their teams across Glasgow. It’s great to see colleagues acting on the values of the What Matters to You? approach (this link will take you away from our website): holding meaningful conversations in order to hear what and who matters most to people. Read below to hear from our friends at Blue Triangle about how they have made a difference in acting on what is most important for someone staying within a BTHA project.
Nicole’s Story
Nicole became pregnant whilst staying at the Shettleston project. Nicole told staff she was hoping to have a baby reveal with her boyfriend, brother and a few friends. Nicole told staff she had nowhere to have the reveal. Staff suggested to Nicole that we could have a reveal party for her it in the back yard in the project.
Nicole was pleased with this idea; staff began putting their heads together to make plans to have a fantastic day for Nicole one she would always remember.
Staff had a pre-arranged meeting with Lorraine Mac the community Champion for Morrison’s in Bishopbriggs, we informed her about the up and coming reveal and asked if there was anything Morrison’s they could donate for the reveal. Lorraine was very enthusiastic about contributing to the reveal she informed us that the staff team in her store would be more than happy to donate baby items as she felt this was a very good cause.
The following week Lorraine delivered a huge amount of baby items including baby clothes, baby bottles nappies milk food and toys, she informed us that Morrisons had donated some of the goodies and the staff team at Morrison’s had generously made individual donations to support us to ensure this was a memorable life event for Nicole.
The preparations began: – Natalie organised to get donations form local businesses – cupcakes a tray of sandwiches and beautiful chocolate covered strawberries. Natalie also made a nappy cake and various other baby decorations for the event. Jennifer organised beautiful balloons she decorated baskets which contained baby food and other baby items such as sudocream etc. Jennifer also made a memory frame that Nicole will eventually add photos to. Other staff organised snacks and juice for the event, set up the backyard and came down to the project to celebrate with Nicole.
Nicole her partner and her visitors arrived at the project for the reveal party.
Staff greeted Nicole and her guests.
Nicole was surprised at the effort staff had put into making her day special and that they too had shown up to celebrate with her; she was in awe of the beautiful cake the project staff got made for her, she also loved how staff decorated the back garden for her reveal party.
After having snacks and chatting about what sex we all thought the baby was Nicole and her boyfriend proceeded to pop the gender reveal balloon, we all watched in anticipation most of us thought it was going to be a wee girl except for Stefi who was proved wrong when the balloon popped out millions of baby pink confetti
Nicole was overjoyed when she saw the shower of pink confetti as she was convinced she was having a wee girl. After the excitement of the baby reveal Nicole took time to look at all of her gifts, she was very impressed with the amount of gifts and the presentation of the gifts and thanked staff over and over again for the effort they put into her reveal party.
The rest of the afternoon went well both staff and visitors enjoyed the amazing food and cake and chatted about possible names for the baby; Nicole told us she had already made a decision her wee girl will be named Kayla.
It was a pleasure to have this wonderful memorable event for Nicole and we all await the birth of baby Kayla.