The Marillac Neurological Care Centre is the newest charity to join Daughters of Charity Services.

December at the Marillac is usually a magical time: meetings stop, trees go up, reindeer appear (literally reindeer appear in the hall!) and our activities team works wonders to ensure that everyone has a festive time culminating with our end of year Carol Service. Last year things were different. There were no reindeer or Carol Service. The activities team worked very creatively to organise as many shows whilst keeping people safe. We managed to get some families up on Christmas Day for window visits but, like the rest of the country, we were on lockdown.

In the New Year, work picked up in an effort to get across the Independence line and join Daughters of Charity Services fully by April. We were lucky that we had the experience and guidance of the Daughters and Daughters of Charity Services to guide us in the right direction. Sheree Rowland was invaluable and certainly a driving force for us. Prior to January, we had been supported by a Board of Advisors and we managed to add to them and recruit some experienced and skilled people from our local community. These have all become Trustees in our new service, and their skills and experience will be essential in guiding us through the first year.

We have, at the same time as working towards our Independence, been running our service. The clinical teams have been challenged with a service running at maximum occupancy and a waiting list to fill any vacant beds. They have responded magnificently, and not only managed to provide high quality care and treatment, but the fact they have managed to do this during a pandemic to the magnitude of COVID is amazing. The support team managed to ensure that we were never short of PPE and have managed to keep our resident’s safe.

In January, we managed to organise a vaccination programme that ensured we had 47 residents and 136 staff vaccinated over a period of Sunday’s. We also managed to include Seton and Donworth House. In March we got the go ahead to be Independent. Our Board of Advisors became Trustees, our legalities were signed and on the 1st April 2021, we managed to join Daughters of Charity Services and became Marillac Neurological Care Centre as an Independent Charity.

Source: Daughters of Charity, Province of Rosalie Rendu, Newsletter