Melanie has worked at Bupa’s Red Court Care Home in Croydon for two years as the Home Manager. Due to the Coronavirus pandemic, the past few weeks haven’t been easy and like in all care homes across the country, the team has had to adapt quite quickly to an unprecedented situation to continue to provide exceptional care for their residents.
With a number of team members at the home having to self-isolate following the Public Health England’s precautionary guidance, Melanie made the decision to temporarily leave her family home, her husband and two sons and move into the care home at the beginning of April.
Over the past few weeks, in order to fully support the home and its residents, Mel has covered various jobs in the home including residents’ personal care, cooking for the residents and also cleaning and she has recently completed medication training too. Mel is also supporting new team members as they settle into their new roles at the care home. She works very long hours and is always on call for when other team members need any support or guidance.
As well as keeping residents safe and well, Melanie also goes to great lengths to ensure they stay happy too. She’s spending a lot of time with the residents and while they can’t currently have visitors, she ensures they keep in touch with their loved ones by Skype and phone. The home would normally have lots of visitors coming and going, including entertainers who come in for the resident activities, but this is obviously not happening now, so she makes sure there’s a range of daily activities and pass times so the residents are still having fun. The home recently held an opera in the front garden of the home so the residents could watch and enjoy from inside.
The whole team at Red Court has gone above and beyond during a difficult situation, working long hours and extra shifts, cancelling annual leave, taking on new responsibilities and just about anything else they can do to ensure residents are safe and well and happy.
Red Court which is rated ‘Good’ by the CQC, provides nursing and residential care for 32 residents and it has a carehome.co.uk score of 9.7 from 47 reviews.