Pax

St Mary's Church | Alne, North Yorkshire UK

Another backblip... I'm meeting the new manager of J's dad's care home on Monday to discuss a few things.

We spent a long visit (naively, we knew, expecting it to be short) with J on Sunday afternoon. He was really down and upset with himself, but of course, he can't express why.

One thing we do know is that he responds firmly and positively to confrontation, as you would expect from someone who used to command the count police force. He got a commendation once for single-handedly and calmly defusing a large and aggressive football crowd.

We believe there is one individual resident who has taken to needling and goading him for no reason. And he responds firmly and positively. We are refusing to have him labelled as proactively "aggressive". J has been so worried and upset for him.

So, I'm taking care home duty and J is going off with one of our girls to celebrate her achievement in town for the day with some retail therapy. I wanted to get her to have a complete girls' day out. I have set up a meeting with C, the new manager, to chat things through. We don't want things going pear-shaped for either party.

I have a long experience in my hospital career of tackling these sort of things directly. The best approach is softly, softly, collaboratively and firmly. We need a strategy; think about me blipsters...