Fire heroine wins Care award

Helen Hill, Manager at St Monica Wills House in Bedminster, the residential facility for elderly people run by St Monica Trust and hit by fire last December, has won recognition for her role in managing the disaster and supporting the 63 elderly residents who were displaced from their homes for almost three months.

Appointed to her role as Care and Support Manager for the Bedminster site in just May last year, Helen has been named as regional winner in the Ted Gully Award, an industry award that recognises and promotes excellence amongst new managers in Social Care.

When fire broke out at Monica Wills House, a brand new building, just 5 days before Christmas, Helen and her support team spent the first hours working with the fire brigade to help evacuate everyone from the building. She and her team then played a central role resettling residents in temporary accommodation, providing daily support for those who were rehoused in other St Monica Trust accommodation and others who were settled over Christmas with family, friends and with another local housing organisation at different sites across the city. Setting up temporary bases at two other St Monica Trust sites in Cote Lane and Westbury, Helen and her team continued to provide practical help, support and also comfort to the residents as they returned for three months to St Monica Trust accommodation, 21 of them living in a temporary village constructed within just weeks at the St Monica Trust Cote Lane site. Working with a new team, many of whom had only recently started working for the Trust, this was a significant management achievement, and the judges recognised Helen’s excellence in uniting and supporting her staff to succeed in extremely difficult circumstances.

Says Helen, “I’m obviously very pleased to receive the award, but want to highlight how much this was a team effort. Everyone was brilliant, working extremely hard and drawing on great depths of personal resources, skill, knowledge and training to keep going under extreme difficulties.”

Helen, who received £500 as West of England winner, will now go forward to a national final and the opportunity to receive a £1,000 travel bursary to investigate Social Care models in other parts of the world. The National final will be held in November.

The Award is given by the South West Regional Committee of Skills for Care in memory of Ted Gully, the founder Chair of the Regional Committee and long time champion of raising standards in social care delivery.

With 121 one and two-bedroom apartments Monica Wills House is the third purpose-built retirement and sheltered accommodation facility now completed in Bristol by the St Monica Trust. The Trust has been providing high quality accommodation, care and support for older and disabled people from Bristol, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset for more than 80 years, along with the support and facilities that help residents maintain an independent lifestyle.