Our team are awesome!

This morning the office team had a discussion about the current weather and how it had impacted on our business overnight.

Of course, I was involved in this whole-heartedly, never once looking over the manager’s head to the donuts that were placed just behind him. We love donut Friday in this office!

In all honesty, though, the weather has been pretty extreme overnight. This morning it was minus 2 in my car! Schools in Plymouth have been closed, drivers were stranded at Holden Hill for hours with local pubs making up make shift beds to house cold and tired drivers for the night, trains have been cancelled and plenty of people have fallen on the icy pavement’s including our very own Marketing genius in the office.

In March of last year, we had snow for days. Of course, the romantic part of me thought it was wonderful to see families outside having snowball fights, sliding on sleds and making snowmen before going indoors to cosy up and watch a film in front of a roaring fire but alas the above dramas happened and Plymouth came to a standstill.

During that time we were unable to get milk and bread due to delivery trucks being unable to make it down the motorway. My wife was determined to make sure this did not happen again, so if you need milk we have approximately a cow full in our fridge and an entire factory load of Hovis at our house. Oh and enough chocolate to get us through the cold period, priorities!

Going back to this morning’s meeting, the conclusion was that last night’s adverse weather had no effect on the business at all.

All of our care team made it to work, some were non-drivers, wrapped up warm on public transport, some of the team had to drive through the moors to nearby towns and some even chose to walk but they all got to work.

I believe this is a testament to the fantastic care team that we have at Next Generation.

I have spent the majority of my working years in the care sector yet I have never met such a team of such kind, passionate and caring people, and the type of people who stick together and do what they can to ensure that the vulnerable people they support are actually cared for.

Supporting others can be a hard career to take, we support people who have complex needs and some have complex behaviours, the hours are long and you may not always feel appreciated immediately.

But our team chose this career because they enjoy making a difference in someone’s life, they enjoy supporting others in becoming independent and reaching their potential and that is an immediate reward of this career, making another person smile.

We and when I say we, I mean the whole team at Next Generation, from the care team to the office team and management; really do care about care and we really do put vulnerable people at the forefront of everything we do.

Over the years this team have donated over 300 Easter Eggs to deserving causes such as hostels, hospitals and care homes, we have donated over 200 Advent Calendars to vulnerable people within the area, we donated masses of clothes and toiletries to the homeless, we have put together an annual fundraising event for the local community and have raised a huge amount of money for deserving charities such as MIND and Age UK.

Next Generation are devoted to care equality within the community and we cannot do what we do without the amazing team of care staff that we have so a huge well done and thank you to each and every one of you.

Stay safe and keep warm xx