Hello, my name is Samwel and I am a Locum Support Worker at St Martins. I work a lot with the people we support, and being a locum means that I cover shifts if someone isn’t there or they are on holiday. I am currently studying alongside my role but am in my final semester at university.
I start my shift at 07:30am. Most of my shifts are at Bishopbridge House, but I do also work occasionally at Dibden Road, The Hub, and St Martins House.
The first thing I do is a handover. We sit down and have a chat about what happened the previous day and through the night, so we are up to date on the goings on in the accommodation.
I then check over the bed list book to see which residents are in the hostel and confirm that the bed list and listed activities are listed correctly on our internal software. I also look over the diary for residents schedules appointments.
Throughout the day I am on hand to check whether any residents need assistance. I periodically get calls from GPs, support workers, and anyone needing information.
Sometimes the guys like to call me over for a pool or table football match during the day, and its nice to engage with them in this way. You are having fun as well as working.
I carry out daily welfare checks to see how people are doing on a day to day basis and to see if they need any support. This is also a good opportunity to hand out any mail and remind the residents of any appointments they have that day. This is usually done with 2 people in case we find something that we aren’t able to deal with on our own – for example, finding someone unconscious.
If someone is moving on from the premises, we have to move out all of their belongings and clean the room ready for another resident to move in. We also make a list for maintenance as we go along to make them aware of any damage or repairs that need to be fixed.
We are now restarting the Dibden Road bee project. Sadly, all of our bees died over the winter so we are now left with empty hives. However, the residents and I have made some new hives ready for more bees, and we are now awaiting some bees which are going to be kindly donated from someone in the community. It’s a great project to be involved with and its something that the residents can get stuck into.
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