Red Cross Blogs

Taking care of service users in Wales

By Jamie
January 9, 2010 at 11:30 am

Guest post: Sue Whalley, service manager for the Gofal Care in the Home Programme, in North Wales, updates us on what she and her dedicated colleagues have been doing to support vulnerable people in the region during the week of the great freeze.

Geographically North Wales varies enormously as you travel along the coast, into the beautiful mountains of Snowdonia and then inland to a vast rural community of small towns and villages and isolated farms.

It has been a week of great variations in weather and as always staff and volunteers at the various North Wales offices have battled with snow and ice to help in particular the older people of North Wales.

Among our staff we have members who wear many hats. Care in the home manager for Conwy and Denbighshire Dave Worrall is part of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Team in the spectacular Snowdonia National Park. Dave has been involved in many rescues over the past weeks but on Saturday, Jan 2, there was a particularly difficult rescue involving the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Team and RAF Valley (RAF training base in Anglesey). Under very extreme conditions the team rescued a climber with a broken femur and he was airlifted to Ysbyty Gwynedd (Gwynedd Hospital) where he is now comfortable. Dave, who lives in the mountains, was then snowed in for two days but luckily could work from home.

Red Cross care in the home support worker Luke Pickering helped a lady who was living in an isolated part of the county and had no supplies or money and was unable to get out of the house. We contacted Tesco, for whom we were charity of the year last year. They were very helpful and supplied essential provisions. Luke then obtained a specialist vehicle and took the provisions to the lady.

Laura, a student at Chester University, who works part time as a support worker for care in the home in Wrexham, got her boyfriend and his 4×4 vehicle to transport her on visits to older people in the hills of Wrexham while other staff were unable to get into the office. Well done Laura!

Lewis Smith, our admin officer in Abergele, braved the snow and ice to battle into the office every day to man the telephones for emergency calls and to support the services.

The emergency response in North Wales has been co-ordinated by David Hallows. David has been with the Red Cross for over 15 years so he’s very experienced and has a fantastic group of trained volunteers who have been responding to emergencies. Glyn Jones is a volunteer who was on his first day with the Red Cross when he and David made an emergency delivery of wheelchairs to Wrexham and in the afternoon ended up in the hills of Flintshire assisting a support worker to deliver emergency rations to an elderly lady who was cut off by the snow and ice.

Transport and Escort services in Gwynedd and Anglesea have kept the wheels turning in very difficult conditions.

Meanwhile I have been one of the people contacting more than 100 of our current service users to make sure that their needs are met. I have been out to visit many of them while supporting others over the phone and all this to ensure vulnerable people in the community are safe and well.

---

Comment (0) »

---

The Red Cross values comments both complimentary and critical. However, we will not tolerate the following: aggressive or personal criticism of the blogger, breach of copyright, obscene, defamatory, profane, sexually oriented, racially offensive or likewise objectionable comments.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 9th, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under Health and social care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

---