Suffolk Care Workers Appreciation

Care workers across Suffolk have been working throughout the COVID-19 pandemic with almost no break or lull in the crisis. Whilst many were paid 80% of their salary to stay at home doing quizzes on zoom with friends and watching Netflix, care workers in care homes across the country were caring for the most vulnerable people and worrying that today might be the day they take a deadly virus back to their families.

As I write this, it is nineteen and a half months since the first national lockdown in the UK. More than 140,000 people have died within 28 days of testing positive with COVID-19, many of whom were the most vulnerable people in our society. Those that are receiving care.

The emotional toll and stress this has put upon our Social Care workforce can not be understated. When you care for someone consistently, you spend a lot of time in intimate company. You build relationships with them based on mutual trust, many people consider their carers an extension of their family, and this is often reciprocated.

Being part of Social Care is more than “wiping bums”, as it is often described to me by the ignorant, it is about being part of the best of humanity.

Showing genuine empathy, not as a sales tactic but because they actually care. They take responsibility to make sure our loved ones are well looked after and often go the extra mile to make that happen. They put others before themselves, an example of this is turning up to work despite a pandemic that keeps everyone else at home. This is also evidence of world-beating integrity. I have never met people that have more kindness in their heart or such a joyous sense of humour as people that work in Social Care.

We should be so proud of the work everyone in Social Care has done over the last nineteen and a half months, but also the decades before it, which is also time Care Workers spent demonstrating complete selflessness. For far to long the value of what great Social Care brings to this country and humanity has been forgotten.

Which is the basis of why Ocala Healthcare got started in the first place, and so we are very excited to be holding the first-ever Suffolk Carer Appreciation Event!

The event will be afternoon tea with live music on the 11th of November at the wonderful Venue16 in Ipswich. Adam Thomas will be performing live!

If you work in Social Care and would like to event, just add yourself to our Facebook Event and a member of the team will be in touch!