South Lodge 50th Anniversary - staff story

Shona McTaggart who is currently the Team Leader for Care at Home was a member of staff at South Lodge in the 1990s as part of her early career. She shared some of her memories of her time at the care home:

When did you work in South Lodge and what was your role?

I worked in South Lodge from 1995 - 2000 as a Senior Social Care Worker on the second floor of the Care Home. 

Can you describe a typical day? What sort of residents were you supporting? Can you remember how many people lived there at the time? (I'm interested in how care has changed over the time.)

Typical day for me would start at 7.45am with the handover from the night shift staff.  If I was the most senior person on shift I would check the safe to ensure all monies were accurate.  I would then work on the floors to support people to get ready for the day and deal with any issues that came up.  I would either administer the medication or delegate the task.  After breakfast, I might do a room check.  I might have  a supervision or a review to attend.  After lunch when the back shift came in - there would be an opportunity for staff to take the residents out either on a 1 to 1 basis or as a group ( usually a bus run).   Backshift would be much the same but making sure that everyone that wanted to go to bed early did but if they wanted to stay up late this was supported, there was still a culture of everyone had to be in bed before the nightshift came on, I worked hard to break that cycle.

The needs of the residents were very mixed - some people were had a high level of complex needs, also most nursing needs and other people you would question why they were in South Lodge and today would not meet the criteria for Residential care.  People rarely moved out of south lodge as we would provide EOL as much as possible.

We were a 40 bed unit but usually only had 39 beds due to the one double room. On the ground floor, was the respite floor - there were 10 beds - 9 single rooms and 1 double room that was used for couples.  We initially provided respite to people across Strathclyde but that changed once the region was split up and after that we only supported people from South Ayrshire.

On the first and second floor were our permanent beds, all single rooms.  During my time there small kitchens were installed in each floor to encourage families and residents to make their own cups of tea etc. Small dining areas were created on each floor to give people the choice whether to go to the large dinning room or stay on their own floor. 

Each floor had dedicated staff and staff would be key workers to people living on that floor.

Outing were encourage and supported. Some staff took residents on holiday to Spain, more locally to Craig Tara and I took 2 residents on a bus trip up north. Moving and handling was still very much a manual task, as moving and handling equipment was just starting to be introduced and were not used as rigorously as they are now - no plans, no risk assessments just your judgement.

What were the challenges of the job ?

Staffing was significant, as at times on the backshift in particular there would only be me and two care officers for the 39 people and I would be providing direct care as well as having overall responsibility for the service.

Recognition of the skills of the staff - SVQ's were only then starting to be pushed for staff to complete but other professionals still did not recognise the skills, knowledge and expertise of the staff due to not holding a qualification.

Can you remember what the flats upstairs were used for?

The senior staff would use them for sleep overs.  Also at one point a unit from East Ayrshire was decanted into the flats until their building was updated. I think that a young person may have been homed there at one time with a full staff team and when I worker in the Children and Families Team (2000 - 2005) we used the flats for supervised contact with families.

What did you go on to do after South Lodge? Did it help with a career in social care?

I move from South Lodge to being a full time SVQ assessor within the Council and eventually I was appointed the SVQ co-ordinator for the full of care in SAC. 

South Lodge was a busy unit and no 2 days were the same - so I think this prepared me well for future posts, as well as providing direct care and being the start point of my career in management - I learned from both the negative events as well as the positive and I have no doubt that my experiences have helped shape the person I am today.  I worked with a great team and still have fond memories of some of the residents from that time. 

Although it was a difficult job and sometimes we didn't get a chance to have a break we still had fun and worked hard to make South Lodge feel like their home.