Emma’s Story

“JAM CARE’s dedication, support, and commitment is second to none.”

Emma joined our JAM family in summer of 2024. Emma is an amazing young woman who suffers from Jacobsen’s syndrome which affects Emma’s speech, motor skills, and means she has a learning disabilities. Emma also has Paris-Trousseau syndrome, which is very common for people with Jacobsen’s, and means she can bruise easily and bleed a lot.

Emma’s mum and dad wanted a new care provider for Emma, one who could provide consistent staff, who would also actively encourage Emma in her hobbies and social activities and get stuck in with her!

Emma has a social life that most people would be jealous of, from swimming to horse-riding, bowling to singing, and that’s before we get started on drawing, puzzles, and her Nintendo Wii. So, her team had to be super active.

A key success factor here was recruiting the right care staff! Our Head of Recruitment followed a very specific brief when it came to the team: must be drivers, must be physically active, must be willing to get “stuck in”, must be eager to learn and do new things.

A final key piece of the puzzle was ensuring continuity of staff, which for Emma means familiar faces, and for JAM meant retaining our current very low levels of staff attrition. At JAM, we achieve this across all our clients through 4 key areas:

• Great Pay – we pay well above the industry averages, and above NMW and NLW (National Minimum and Living Wage).
• Great Benefits – carers receive multiple bonuses (loyalty, staff referral, great performance etc), a free wellness and wellbeing package including access to an online GP and prescriptions delivered to your door, free counselling support, paid DBS and paid to train.
• Great Training – (all paid for)- staff complete induction training, a JAM assessment centre, clinical & operational competencies for every client they support, and client specific training, plus opportunities to gain qualifications (e.g. NVQ).
• 24/7 staff support – Most importantly, we are there for our staff. They have regular touch points via 121’s, receive 3 update messages each week, and have an out of hours service staffed by people that know our business and our clients.

Emma is absolutely thriving, and the best people to explain this are her mum & dad… (Please see Testimonies)

Emma’s Mum and Dad– We just thought it worth a shout out for JAM CARE – it was exactly six months yesterday that Emma took up residence in her bungalow, aided and supported by her wonderful JAM staff.

We want to express our appreciation to all the JAM CARE team for your hard work and support and especially for the carers who work regularly with Emma. Their dedication, support and commitment is second to none and how we can help in ensuring this continues ad infinitum is our wish and aim. We hope that all the staff are confident in seeking our help or advice whenever they feel – certainly thus far this seems to be the case.

Over the past six months we have seen Emma develop wonderful bonds with her care staff, and we feel sure that their confidence in supporting Emma has grown in the same way that Emma has grown in independence. We have received many very positive comments from people who have known Emma previously, from the staff at the Sports Village, and also parents of Emma’s peers. All have expressed the high level of care displayed by the JAM CARE staff, and this is more than we could have wished for..

You’ve set the bar high for sure in the first six months and we are always grateful that we can speak to the management team about anything and that we are ALWAYS listened to. Entrusting the care and life of our daughter into someone else’s hands without fear and acute anxiety we did think was unachievable. Thank you, and thanks to all the wonderful carers Emma has.