KEY workers in North Yorkshire are adapting to working in new environments and unprecedented situations to ensure residents get the best service, despite being in the middle of a global pandemic.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak began key workers, have tirelessly put in extra hours, early mornings and late nights, working for the community from their dining room tables and spare bedrooms.

They’ve also been out and about, making sure the vulnerable or elderly within each community is accommodated for, safe and healthy.

Richard Webb, corporate director for health and adult services, said: “The team of frontline workers across North Yorkshire have shown how strong and resilient they are, even during a time of global crisis.

“They truly have been there for anyone who needs them and ensured that no-one slips through the cracks, making sure their ways of working reflect the times safely and with everyone’s mental wellbeing in mind.”

We have highlighted two more examples of our exemplary frontline workers.

For Jayne Howarth, a social worker based in Whitby and Scarborough, the biggest way in which she’s had to adapt to life and work during the Covid-19 pandemic is not being able to speak to service users face to face.

Ms Howarth, along with other key workers across the county, has helped keep North Yorkshire running smoothly despite the unprecedented circumstances of a global pandemic.

She said: “There’s two sides to my job, I’m in the independence team – normally we do assessments of people who are not currently open to health and adult social care.

“We assess, screen and put in Reablement if it’s appropriate or we pass it on to the planned care team if they have long term support needs. At present we are adopting a one team approach across all of the independence and planned care teams so we are doing a bit of everything.

“I’m also a safeguarding officer, so a good chunk of my work is safeguarding too. This is how I met one lady, through my safeguarding work. She has a care agency helping her at home, but when her daughter had to self-isolate for 12 weeks she went to live with her during this period, so that her daughter could still provide informal support and it meant carers not coming in and out so it reduced the risk to her mum.

“With situations like this one, you have to be aware that it might cause deterioration and dependency having a family member around 100 percent of the time.

“It was a really positive outcome – the daughter did a fantastic job of empowering her to be independent."