As I arrive in the office at 8.30, Hannah has already been here for over an hour, well into the swing of her day as she speaks on the phone with one of many customers she’ll support today.
The first stop of the day is to visit a 98-year-old lady who needs support with her Carecall equipment, followed by a man who has fallen and needs help. After lifting him up, Hannah makes him a cup of tea and has a chat with him before leaving for the next job. It’s gestures like this which show unmistakably how much Hannah cares for the wellbeing of the customers she helps. On the way back to the office, a call comes through redirecting Hannah to another customer in need; she pulls the car over and redirects it to another address.
She visits another man who has fallen and, once he’s safe, chats with his wife about the wedding photos on their mantelpiece.
She is warm, reassuring, yet still efficient in her care. Hannah’s work and her skills are diverse; she navigates technology and equipment, always friendly and personable, multi-tasking and moving pragmatically from customer to customer.
We visit a further two customers before heading back to base. One had accidentally triggered their alarm and was unable to hear our call centre asking them if they were OK – so Hannah popped in to check on them. Everything was fine and Hannah made them feel really relaxed – ‘It’s no problem, I’m just glad you’re OK!’ she says!
The final person we visited had fallen in a very awkward position and following Hannah’s triage it was evident they had injured their hip. Hannah quickly and efficiently passed the details over to the Ambulance Service and then updated the team back in control. They were able to ring the lady’s daughter who lived 10 minutes away and she came to comfort her mum until the ambulance arrived. We were later updated that the customer had broken her hip – but her daughter wanted to thank us for getting to her mum so quickly! She had been in lots of pain and Carecall had got her medical help and her daughter when she had no other way of raising the alarm.
Back in the office, I notice there’s a real sense of community amongst the Carecall Team. During shift handover they discuss their next team social – an outing to a Chinese restaurant at the end of the month. Hannah leads the organising of events, “It’s nice to get together outside of work – we always have so much fun”, she says!
The Carecall Team might be working on a different schedule to the rest of us, covering 24hrs a day, 365 days a year, but when I ask Hannah how she feels about this, it’s clear that it’s worth it for the satisfaction of knowing that you’re helping the people in your community. Asked what her favourite part of the job is, she replies without skipping a beat: “helping people.”