Radfield battles the snow to ensure client care and safety

Radfield Home Care Harrogate, Wetherby and North Yorkshire proved it is willing to go the extra mile after battling several weeks of treacherous conditions to make sure its vulnerable clients were supported. Over the last two weeks carers have shown an exceptional effort. Radfield’s care professionals, whose head office is based at Jennyfields, braved the arctic conditions during the deluges for a fortnight during January to make sure that their clients received the care calls they needed.

Radfield looks after some of the most vulnerable clients in the community, many of whom have no family and or whose families cannot visit because of the current covid-19 pandemic. So, when the snow started to fall at the end of last week and the week before, Radfield Home Care Harrogate, Wetherby and North Yorkshire’s director, Matthew Nutting, and his team of more than 30 carers made sure that there was little impact to their service – with Matthew even testing out his wife’s new 4×4 in the treacherous conditions!

Matthew, a former occupational therapist who runs the company with his father Jonathan Nutting explains why it was so important to do this:

“We didn’t want to leave our clients without any support at all, so we all helped out. We have clients in rural areas which we knew some of our carers wouldn’t be able to reach in their own cars. So I ended up driving carers around to calls.

The last 10 months has been unprecedented and there has been even more pressure on the home care sector, especially when people live alone and don’t have family nearby. Many of our clients have had to shield since March 2020, so it is vitally important that we make sure that they are supported.”

And after a weekend of disruption caused by the weather Radfield thought they might be let off – but the snowfall returned thick and fast and the care team were once again out and about. Matthew describes the efforts of those in the health and social care sector who regularly go above and beyond:

“Community care staff are all too often forgotten about and unseen, as the NHS and care homes receive the main media attention. However, we are out there, all day, every day, providing home care for some of the most vulnerable people in society and today has been a challenge for more reasons than just Covid. Last week we made it to Ripon, Pateley Bridge, Boroughbridge, Harrogate and many villages in between. Many of our days started before 5am and many staff worked past 10pm.

Carers dug themselves out, dug each other out and even dug other people out! Office staff coordinated over 100 care calls during the day, spoke to families, clients, staff, community services and made hundreds of phone calls making sure people were safe.

We do all of this to make sure that some of the most vulnerable in our society are cared for. We aren’t just a business, we aren’t just a team, we are a family that truly cares about our clients and it has been a real family effort.”

If you would like to find out more about Radfield Home Care and the care support services offered, you can visit www.radfieldhomecare.co.uk or [email protected] or 01423 608 760.