Staff worked so hard at care home
I was saddened to read in the November 17 issue of the closure of the Leopold Muller care home where I worked and also volunteered for 15 years.
I joined the staff as a care worker in 2000 intending to stay for three months until a stone carving contract came on line and I could get back to my “real job”.
As the months passed I was so impressed by the difference the staff were making to the lives of the residents whose disabilities were multiple, including blindness, dementia, learning difficulties, autism and many serious physical problems. The defining thing was that on top of the above mentioned, everyone was deaf.
The staff were kind and skilled at communicating and all had some basic level of signing BSL, some were more advanced.
I remember on my first day talking to a young woman who was on the verge of tears because she was leaving. The reason was that she could not afford to stay on the pay.
Many of the staff were young single people who loved the work but could not make their way in the world, afford a car, a mortgage, children, on the pay.
These people had learned BSL sign language and many other skills thanks to the excellent training but all was lost because of the poor wages.
On the whole the staff that stayed were young married women supplementing the household income and older women approaching retirement and it was these stalwarts that retained the skills and gave long term continuity to our very special residents.
When I started, the Leopold Muller Unit, adapted from part of a Victorian house, was beyond its sell by date, the rooms and bathrooms were too small to manoeuvre lifting equipment easily and it was constantly being reviewed for closure but a plan
never materialised
for new premises.
I can remember that a day’s work on the unit was as hard as a day working in a stone yard, the routine was physical, relentless and hot as we tended to the needs of the residents.
At the end of a shift there was usually half an hour of 40 minutes when we could do some activity with the residents but that depended on being able to use BSL which agency staff can’t do.
After my initial three months I went back to stone carving but remained as a care worker on Sunday mornings. I no longer needed the money but I realised Sunday morning was a difficult shift to staff. The young people who worked hard all week liked a Saturday night out, and why not, and getting up early on a Sunday wasn’t popular.
So I stayed on and after our Sunday
morning routines took as many residents as possible to St Michael’s Church which proved a popular weekly outing.
It would seem that the unit must have reached a tipping point after I finished aged 65 in 2015.
You can’t live on goodwill and poor wages forever. Agency staffing is a stopgap only.
You can’t successfully run a special needs unit like Leopold Muller once you have lost long term staff and their expertise. Isn’t this just what is happening across the NHS and is anyone going to fix it? Laurence Tindall
Bath