October 2021

13 Buckden Roundabout October 2021 ‘ Support our Buckden Businesses ’, will be an ongoing feature. If you are a local business and are interested in being included, please reach out to the Roundabout team via the contact details on page 3. Continuing with our quest to encourage us all to spend local where we can by profiling, celebrating and championing the local businesses of Buckden, we turn our attention to the social care. This month we caught up with Paul Fletcher the manager of Hardwick Dene Residential Home to find out how life has been there over recent times … HARDWICK DENE RESIDENTIAL HOME Tell me a bit about Hardwick Dene? We ’ re a residential dementia home and part of Sohal Healthcare a family run business with around 10 homes mainly in Suffolk and Essex. We ’ re set in a large country house that was built in the 1920s as a gentlemen ’ s residence and became a residential home in 1990. We have 47 rooms with residents ranging from late 60’ s to 101. Not all our residents have de- mentia but the majority do to varying degrees. We pride our- selves on offering a homely, open environment in a nice quiet rural location. How did you come to be manager at Hardwick Dene? My background is actually recruitment and over time I started to specialise in health and social care. I made the move into a regional manager role for a domiciliary care provider which is all about providing care to people in their own homes. One day I was approached by an old director to ask if I ’ d manage a care home in his portfolio and I decided to go for it. That was to a home near Cambridge around 5 years ago and then 3 years ago I moved here to Hardwick Dene. I absolutely love what I do as in domiciliary care I spent a lot of time firefighting and didn ’ t get to see the fruits of my labour but at Hardwick Dene you really get to see the impact of the work you do which is so rewarding. Clearly, I wasn ’ t expecting us to be hit with a pandemic but I ’ m really proud of how we ’ ve managed through it so far as a team. There ’ s been so much media coverage during the pandemic about the treatment of care homes, what has your experi- ence been? It ’ s been such a rollercoaster. When it all first kicked off it was an incredibly scary time. We had all the news coverage rolling in from Italy and Spain where it was being reported that Covid was ripping through care homes and at the time it seemed like our government wasn ’ t taking it seriously. We were so con- cerned that we decided as Sohal group to lockdown on the 10 th March 2020 which was a couple of weeks ahead of the nation- al lockdown. People thought we were mad at the time but in hindsight it was one of the best decisions we made as still to this date we haven ’ t had a single resident contract Covid in the home which is not unfortunately the norm across the industry. It wasn ’ t easy though to keep it out as firstly there was a lot of pressure from local hospitals to take patients regardless of their COVID status. Sadly, patients were being sent out to homes with COVID or at best untested and the consequences of that were in some cases horrific. We had to put the safely of our residents first and refused to take anyone unless we were 100% certain they didn ’ t have COVID. We had two resi- dents that contracted COVID during stays in hospital, one sadly passed away and the other returned to us once they had re- covered which was a wonderful moment. The home was completely locked down in terms of visitors but the other big risk factor was us as a staffing team bringing it into the home. We were all pretty anxious about that and the team went above and beyond to take precautions in their per- sonal lives to minimise potential exposure. We had some posi- tive cases amongst the staffing team, myself included, and that was a really stressful time while we waited to see if we ’ d passed it on to any of the residents. Thankfully that never hap- pened and after isolating staff were able to come back to work. How did the residents and staff cope with the whole experi- ence? It ’ s amazing how resilient the majority of the residents were! Obviously, there were varying levels of understanding depend- ing on the severity of their dementia but for those that did understand we had regular update meetings, made sure they had easy access to newspapers etc. They didn ’ t show any fear of the virus itself, it was the social impact that was hardest for them as they couldn ’ t see their family or go out anywhere. We introduced a lot of zoom activities with family quizzes and games but obviously nothing can replace physical interaction. The families themselves were also incredibly supportive of the situation, we had regular meetings via zoom to share what we were doing and keep them posted on any protocol changes. There was a lot of pressure as every decision we took directly impacted 70+ people (residents and staff), so to have every- one ’ s support really meant a lot. Staff wise, I couldn ’ t be prouder of the team as everyone pulled together in the most incredible way. We made the deci- sion from the get go that we didn ’ t want to use any agency/ temporary workers during the pandemic as it was too big a risk bringing outsiders in. With various members of the team hav- ing to isolate along the way that meant other team members having to jump in at short notice to cover their shifts. No one batted an eyelid at it though as there was just such a strong sense of camaraderie and drive to protect the residents. It was also lovely to see carers getting the recognition they deserve from society as I don ’ t think that appreciation was really there before. So, lockdown is officially over but COVID is still very much out there, what ’ s the situation now? Things have relaxed a bit for us now and all residents and staff are double vaccinated which enables us to breath a little sigh of relief but we ’ re still far from being ‘ back to normal ’. We (Continued on page 16) Support Buckden Businesses