Fourteen months after joining The Fed, our Assistant Customer Services Team (CST) Manager, 43-year-old Chris Winter, reluctantly agreed to an interview for our Staff and Volunteer Newsletter. Not being a man who likes to blow his own trumpet, he agreed only when we made it clear that we wanted the opportunity to dispel a few myths about what our CST does – though if we are honest, we also wanted to find out a bit about him too!
Chris’s team has nine permanent members, seven of whom are day staff and two at night. There are also four bank workers in the team. Most work 12-hour shifts from 8am to 8pm, with night workers working 8pm to 8am, and alternate working a three-day then four-day week. The longest-serving team member is Richard Hamilton – whose knowledge of Yiddish is quite astonishing!
One thing Chris wants people to know is that the team do not just spend their time pressing the button to open the doors and answering the phones (!) Prior to his interview with our marketing team, he asked them to provide a list of all the tasks that their role demands. You will be grateful that we are not going to list all 53 of them here, but it is worth highlighting some of their lesser-known responsibilities: Carrying out night-time security checks of the whole building. Helping to fit new batteries to hearing aids. Taking residents back to their rooms when care staff on the floor are occupied with other people’s needs. Moving the body of a deceased resident from their room to the mortuary, comforting relatives and accompanying them to the mortuary.
Distracting, reassuring, and encouraging residents when they are agitated or confused. The last example can happen repeatedly and requires the same patience and tenderness we expect and see from our care staff ‘on the floors’. The CST member will down tools, come out from behind the reception counter, place a comforting arm around a distressed person’s shoulder, and take them off chatting in search of a cuppa or to
engage in an activity – until the next time which won’t be long away…
But how did Chris, who had worked at the Co-op for 12 years as an IT engineer, find himself leading our CST team? Well, we have lockdown to thank for that … nearly three years of being stuck in a loft working from home left Chris desperate to get out into the real world again.
He had heard about The Fed from his friend, Natasha Harries, who works in our Fundraising team: “Tash told me what a great place this is to work.”
Chris and Natasha’s husband, Gareth, have been friends since they were teenagers and Chris met Natasha when she was also working at the Co-op. It turns out that he introduced them but “not in a ‘cupid’ kind of way” he says. “One night Gareth and I were out in Manchester, and I suggested going to meet up with Natasha, and well, Gaz did all the work, not me…” The rest is history as they say and ended up with Chris being one of Gareth’s groomsmen at their wedding last summer.
Chris admits that the job was not quite what he expected in the beginning. He imagined something more like hotel reception work: “I had a bit of sensory overload at first with what seemed like hundreds of people needing my attention at any time.”
He thought that residents would spend more time in their rooms: “I didn’t realise that they would spend a lot of time around the reception area – but it’s also part of their home, and that’s how I like to treat it. I’m working in their home. We all are.”
Nor did he anticipate how satisfying he would find the work especially being able to build up relationships with Villagers and enjoying touching moments such as when Moorview tenant, Raymond, gave him a
birthday card he had drawn for him; popping in to see a gentleman who spends a lot of time in his room to exchange some banter and rib him about his football team’s losses, or walking up the path to work in the
morning and spotting a resident waving to wish him ‘good morning.’
It did not occur to him how much of the job would involve helping to make life easier for people and putting a smile on their face. He loves that. He talks about one lady- let’s call her Marjory – who is very confused: “She can ask where her room is ten times in half an hour. Even if it’s the hundredth time you have to answer the same question, you have to do it as if it’s the first.”
He mentions, one of his team who is a university student who works at weekends: “He has a brilliant relationship with her – we call him ‘The Marjory Whisperer’. He’ll sit with her on the couch and get her to talk about her life.” This has helped the rest of the team understand more about her life and be able to help pacify her when she becomes upset. “It means we can give her the best answer to calm her down. She was a teacher, and she gets anxious that she has a meeting to attend, and he will tell her that it has been cancelled, and then she is so relieved.”
Chris has found that his understanding of working with people with dementia has been enhanced by staff dementia training which also benefits his home circumstances. Having left home in 2010 he moved back in with his parents three years later when his father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, to help support his mum in caring for him: “What I’ve learned through training and interacting here with people living with dementia helps me support my mum in caring for Dad. I can recognise better when something my dad is doing is a symptom of his illness, and I’m a lot calmer when he is ranting.”
He is clearly very proud of the kindness his team demonstrates not only to our Villagers but to their workmates as well. He refers to one of his team coming in as a volunteer to take a Moorview tenant to a dental appointment and to another who went to the aid of a tenant at night who had been spotted on camera by their family having fallen in her flat, and the same team member who saw that a colleague in the night-time care team had a flat tyre and duly changed it for them.
And listening you get the impression that if only we had longer to chat there would be many more examples like this, but maybe not enough room in our newsletter.