Grahamston House - Linda Alexander

Engaging Manager

At Grahamston House we welcomed five colleagues from Day Service for Adults into our team; this enhanced the care and support of the residents, their relatives and to increase staffing levels during this challenging period.  This has been an excellent example of transferable skills and experience being utilised, and an opportunity for staff teams to share ideas, knowledge and skills, not to mention to inject some new “personalities” into our team at a difficult time.

For example, one of the male Day Centre Officers has worked very closely with one of the residents who has a very rare type of dementia.  The gentleman requires a lot of one to one support to meet his individual needs and this DCO transferred his existing skills from working with adults living with physical and learning difficulties into his practice with this resident.  As a result, this gentleman has more quality time with this male carer, such as enjoying his walking indoors and outdoors safely, which has clearly had a positive effect on his mental and physical wellbeing.  This professional relationship has also given the residents wife great comfort knowing he is being well supported at a time when she could not visit.

I believe my staff have shown amazing resilience during the pandemic as a professional workforce. They have supported the residents; each other, maintained communication between relatives and their loved one in a variety of ways e.g. face time, Skype, telephone, texting, window visits, outdoor visit and now indoor visits. All to the benefit of the residents and the relatives, whilst adapting to major changes in work practice, procedures and workload. 

What makes me so proud of my team, is the fact that all this hard work and genuine commitment to the residents, relatives, service and team has been carried out to a very high standard whilst one of our colleagues became very ill and sadly died, this was not covid related.  The staff team supported our colleague, her family and each other during this difficult time and on top of everything else they were coping with displays their resilience and genuine passion to their profession.