'We care for our residents at Southside'
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A CARE home manager who stepped into her role to make improvements at a care home after standards were graded weak has defended staff at the facility.
Georgina Simes was hired to run Southside Care Home in Inverness weeks after inspectors dropped in unannounced and wrote a damning report.
They reported seeing some residents with "long dirty fingernails", and toenails which were so badly in need of clipping they may have been causing pain and difficulty walking.
Ms Simes said it can be virtually impossible to provide personal care to dementia-suffering patients.
She said she "couldn’t possibly comment on something that happened when I was not here" but added: "A lot of our residents have dementia so they do not always recognise when we are trying to help them by filing and cutting their nails. Probably a lot of other care homes are like this.
"Our downfall was poor record keeping in that it was not being recorded that carers had attempted to do the nails of some residents without success."
She said when this happened a podiatrist would always be called in but securing appointments "took time".
"Sometimes one of the nurses can distract the resident while their nails are being filed by the professional," she said. "But there’s obviously a lead-in time for that service."
The inspection report also said some residents "were reported to be regularly hungry at night".
But Ms Simes said she saw no evidence of this.
She added: "When the tea-table comes round at night there’s cheese and biscuits and if somebody wants cheese on toast or scrambled eggs we can get that for them.
"I’ve done a couple of night shifts and if a resident gets up and wanders we ask if they’re hungry and sometimes they say yes, and they sometimes say they want a bit of stew heated up from the dinner.
"I can honestly say that there is plenty of food."
She said an open day was being arranged for mid-June to "show people how well the home is being run" and carers were getting a pay rise to show that they were valued.
