The coffee is still too hot to drink so Marguerite puts her mug down for a moment, looks up and smiles, and says: “It’s a really, really lovely job, this. It’s important and worthwhile but it’s also lovely. The people I visit are delightful. Honestly, it’s such good fun.”
Marguerite has been a Home Support Worker for local charity Age UK Shropshire Telford & Wrekin for almost 10 years now, and today she’s visiting Iain who lives in a quiet cul-de-sac untroubled by traffic, and where the neighbourhood cat roams undisturbed.
“We have a really good laugh, don’t we, Iain? Basically, I sit here and he entertains me with all his stories. If he has any ironing to do, he orders me about with the ironing board and tells me I’m not doing it right!”
“Ha!” says Iain. “Know your place, woman!” he jokes, referencing a TV comedy show from years ago.
“The truth is,” says Iain, conspiratorially, “She comes here and moves everything about and when she leaves after two hours, I go round to put everything back where it should be.”
They both laugh.
“When I first started coming here, Iain had had a nasty fall and had spent time in hospital,” says Marguerite. “But through his strength and determination, he’s come round. And his sense of humour never ceases to amaze me.”
Iain, 81, soft-spoken and thoughtful, sits in his favourite armchair, telephone and notebook at his side. In his light grey pullover, burgundy trousers and brown slippers, he is relaxed and happy, trading jokes with Marguerite.
Iain’s wife Joan died “a few years ago”. She was a schoolteacher and, later in life, a Help at Home worker just like Marguerite.
So, what’s Iain’s take on the service provided by Age UK Shropshire Telford & Wrekin.
“Wonderful,” he says. “Yes, we enjoy a joke. But in all seriousness, Marguerite does a great job, and I always look forward to her visits.”
Iain, whose career was as a marketing manager for a truck and trailers components company, producing catalogues and price lists, now lists his hobbies as reading spy and war novels (especially those of Len Deighton and John le Carre) and listening to jazz recordings (including Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Kenny Ball and Acker Bilk).
He says: “As much as anything else, I enjoy chatting with Marguerite. It’s good to have the company.
“Loneliness can be a terrible thing, and I have come to appreciate that a lot more since I have been confined to the house.”
Having said that, Iain says he is blessed to have good neighbours, and his son who lives nearby and who he sees regularly.
Marguerite, married with four children, and a former mental health nurse and later registered childminder, says: “I think originally this role of Home Support Worker was more about helping with housework, and yes of course it is still about that, but it has morphed into something wider than that, something much more holistic, where the social side of it is as important as any jobs that need doing.”
The Help at Home scheme supports older people to maintain their independence by providing practical assistance, and right now the charity is encouraging more people to apply for the service in a number of Shropshire locations including Oswestry, Whitchurch, Wem, Ellesmere and Market Drayton. Anyone interested in applying for Help at Home should email enquiries@ageukstw.org.uk or telephone 01743 233 788 for further details.
The scheme employs a team of caring, well-trained Home Support Workers. All come with good references, and all are checked with the Disclosure & Barring Service. They carry out everyday tasks that an older person may find difficult to manage. These might include:
• vacuuming and dusting
• bathroom and kitchen cleaning
• shopping and collecting prescriptions
• laundry and ironing
• cleaning inside windows
• gardening
Wherever possible the same support worker will visit each time to provide continuity and visits are usually undertaken in two-hour blocks.
“I’ve got to say, the job suits my personality perfectly,” says Marguerite. It’s so varied and interesting and every day is different… Oh, look. Now I’ve let my coffee go cold.”