A ONE stop Health & Social Care hub for families in Turf Lodge is offering opportunities for people with professional health qualifications.
Ardcomm, based at the Ardmonagh Family Centre, is breaking new ground in the services that it offers people in the wider Turf Lodge area – from the young to the elderly – and sees its expertise being needed more in the years ahead, with health and social care services becoming more community-led.
Amongst other things, Ardcomm provides a domiciliary care service and the Good Morning West Belfast telephone support service for the elderly, as well as providing support for children and families.
“We have older adult services, including the Good Morning West Belfast service, which is a telephone support service for the elderly,” explains CEO Richard May. “There are over 400 people registered. They get a call whenever they request it. There’s also a number of them who come here each morning, they stay until two o’clock and get their lunch, it’s a social element for them getting together. They do their own thing and run it themselves.
“We provide a domiciliary care service where we go out and provide care and support for people in their homes, it’s a much-needed service and it’s growing because of the ageing population.
“Then we have the children and family support services working with and supporting children and families who are going through exceptional circumstances. It’s trying to keep families together.
“We also do an outreach for children who would be in foster care. To give foster parents a bit of respite. We would engage with the children, take the children out at weekends.
“And then one of our main services is our residential home for children aged 5-11 years that’s providing 24 hour care for children who are in the care system who may have suffered trauma in their young lives and we have a home where they come into.”
Richard May and Dr Michelle Templeton
Dr Michelle Templeton, director of governance and compliance at Ardcomm, said the residential home “is ground-breaking in the sense of the child protection system”.
“That’s a particular bespoke child rights-based model that we are doing, which is very much about child-centred practice and child-led," she says.
“We have a whole multi-disciplinary team of social workers, psychologists, nurses and other allied health professional counsellors and youth workers and many job opportunities across the whole organisation for all those type of people. We are offering upskilling opportunities to our staff and trying to get more professionals in from our area who bring the necessary understanding and approach that we are looking for.
“It’s ground-breaking what we are doing here.”
Richard added: “The home is heavily regulated and what we have been able to do is to recruit people at a very high level and the thing about it is they are local. We are talking about people with all sorts of degrees such as PhDs and people with health, psychology, law and social work backgrounds. They see themselves coming back into the area and providing those much-needed services. There are opportunities to make a difference in the lives of young children and their families. There are children who are on the cusp of going into the care system, there are children who are in the care system, and there are children who have been in and are now out of the care system.”
Michelle also mentioned that one of the local GP surgeries had closed down and moved to Carrick Hill which has placed new demands on the services that Ardcomm provide. She describes how Ardcomm advocate on behalf of residents by trying to attract the services to come to them.
“Flu and Covid vaccinations have taken place here instead of people having to go to Carrick Hill,” she said. “We want to develop the accessibility of such services and see a time when we can offer more services such as getting mental health nurses in.
“We are commissioned services for the statutory bodies so in terms of pay and wages we are benchmarked against statutory services, so we do pay similar or above.
“We believe health and social care should be on your doorstep – and Ardcomm want to create a hub for families and what the community needs. We’re talking about community empowerment around health, social care and wellbeing. This is the direction of travel. There are people who have high levels of skills and expertise and experience and we can offer them opportunities here with well paid jobs that are no different from statutory bodies. We’re giving people the opportunity to bring their education and experience back to their community and working within their community.”
