Lewis Swanson – Cornerstone

I work at Cornerstone’s Crudenlea care home for both men and women, of different ages and abilities. We have some people that are very able and need minimal support – things like reminding them to brush their teeth or help them prepare breakfast - and others are a lot more care intensive so we'll have to help them out of bed and physically get them showered and things like that.

The pandemic has certainly made things more challenging. Some folks at the house really enjoyed it as they had that structure to the day, others missed being able to get one-to-one time with staff when others would normally go out to activity centres. To start with, there was there was a lot of challenges to overcome. I mean, anytime that you've got a large group of people with complex needs, you're gonna have issues arise, some people will fall out, and you've got to work with it to get them speaking to each other again.

We were allowed to take them out, but we weren't allowed to take them inside places. So we had to go to pubs and restaurants that had outside seating and of course, this all in November, December so it was freezing, but the fact that they could get out helped. One of the toughest parts I guess about this time is that we’ve all been put under the same sort of brand of care home that the government's treating as elderly care, so everyone's at high risk. Whereas in our situation, a lot of the guys aren't really high risk, we could still take them to these outside seated areas, and get them a pub lunch and a pint if they wanted it, but we can't, can't go anywhere.

It can be very challenging, but at the same time it's very, very rewarding. And you do get quite a lot out of it. The guys are really great to work with.