Meet Molly Goddard, one of our homes’ heroes!

Despite the current situation with Coronavirus, thousands of our colleagues up and down the country are ‘keeping calm and carrying on’ to make sure our residents are well looked after.

Meet Molly Goddard, Catering Assistant at Wellington Lodge in Manchester.

My favourite part of the day is the morning when I’m cooking breakfast for our lovely residents. I also enjoy creating special menus and dishes for things like Chinese New Year and our regular Fish Fridays.

I’ve been a Catering Assistant at Wellington Lodge for two years now. I just fell into the role because of a passion for wishing to learn about cooking and I really love it. There’s usually a few catering assistants covering 7 days but some of my colleagues are self-isolating so I’ve been covering some of their shifts along with other staff members – I feel like I live here at the moment! I should also be shielding as I have asthma but I didn’t want to let my colleagues or the residents down so our Home Manager, Kelly, has supported me with a risk assessment so I could stay at work and play my part. The risk assessment ensures my shifts let me have the rest I need to continue to support the home at this time. My colleagues are great - we’ve all supported each-other and we get on really well.

We’re trying to keep as much normal as possible for our residents but we’ve had to make some changes in how we do things for now, especially around having visitors into the home. We’re all helping residents stay in touch with their family on Skype and Facetime instead though.

The main change I’ve had to make at work is that I don’t often leave the kitchen once I change into my whites so we reduce the risk of infections. I’m really pleased we’ve been able to put things in place so that I can still run my baking activity sessions on a Friday morning. They’re popular with our residents, we love to bake cakes, biscuits and pizzas – all the unhealthy things!

I’m also our social media guru and enjoy tweeting about the activities going on in the home and sharing photos of what we get up to. We recently had a fab Easter party, the residents made Easter bonnets, and everyone enjoyed lots of chocolate Easter eggs! Twitter is a great way for families to see what we’re doing too whilst they can’t visit.