TWO little words put the final seal on a package of measures that keep the 94 staff at Woodlands MS Resource & Respite Care Centre, York, happy, dedicated and loathe to leave. They are: "Thank you."

The 24 full-time, 50 part-time, and 20 bank staff who provide short-term respite care to people affected by multiple sclerosis routinely thank the 160 volunteers who support them at the home in Thief Lane, Hull Road, and vice versa. Senior and junior staff thank one another.

Such gratitude, along with a complete review of working practices plus a careful programme of training and staff development, have ensured a slowdown in staff turnover and retention of an experienced and dedicated team to look after 400 people each year.

It has also allowed the 13-year-old centre to enter the Progress Through People category in the 2004 Evening Press Business of the Year Awards.

Rachael Brayshaw, the centre's volunteer and fundraising co-ordinator, said: "As with all businesses working in the care sector, recruiting and retaining carers has been incredibly difficult over the last few years.

"We found that while attracting the right sort of people to our organisation wasn't difficult, we lost their skills to other organisations once we completed their training and they gained experience. This was compounded by the fact that we are a charity and unable to offer higher paid salaries, large bonus schemes and enticing benefits packages."

The centre has always demonstrated its care of staff, achieving its still-held Investors in People accreditation in 1997, but the nursing and care staff concluded that to address this problem there should be several different initiatives working together.

These included holding all in-house courses two or three times to enable shift workers and volunteers to attend at convenient times; a thorough and diverse six-month induction period; training nursing staff to become NVQ Assessors to offer more NVQ training to care assistants; and organising external courses and training sessions for all departments.

Communications have also improved, with a staff newsletter entitled Woodworm edited bi-monthly by Paula Rawding, who took over in May as the new centre manager.

Updated: 12:15 Thursday, August 05, 2004