This week my daughter joined the team. Previously she shadowed the person who was leaving to get to know the clients and how they like things done. We also met a new client who is recently out of hospital and lives far from her family. She asked if we had time to chat and we did. 

She told us all about her children and their partners and where they all lived and how they all were. She talked about her husband who had passed away 40 years ago but the way she spoke about him made us both shed a tear. His photo is everywhere and she pointed to one and said, “There he is, in his uniform, looking so handsome.” 

We both gulped and blinked and tried not to cry.

“Penny provided much-needed support, kindness, and companionship at home during the early stages of my mum’s Alzheimer’s journey. Her calm and caring nature made a real difference, not only to my mum’s daily life but also to my own peace of mind. It was incredibly reassuring to know that Penny would be there to help out when I couldn’t, offering both practical support and genuine friendship. 

Her patience, reliability, and understanding gave us comfort during a challenging time, and I would highly recommend Hook Home Help to anyone looking for compassionate and trustworthy care.”

On the hottest week of the year we have been helping people in and out their homes. We are making sure they are feeling well, and drinking enough and letting families know how their relatives are. Communication is always important but particularly so at times like this. 

We are there to do the little jobs, to change the lightbulbs, change the duvet cover, water the plants etc but also to make sure the house is cool and that people are coping. In this heat it is often helpful to have another pair of hands available as simple tasks can become too hard to contemplate.

This is the day that I went to teach a session on mindfulness at the retirement flats in Hook. Some people had come to my previous session and some were new. I talked about how practicing mindfulness can help with stress and anxiety. This can be really useful for older people who can have a lot to worry about and sometimes no one to talk to about it. 

It is easy for our thoughts to spiral and for the worries to increase. Mindfulness helps us to feel calmer and to see the thoughts more objectively. A small amount of practice can make a big difference to how we feel and how we deal with negative thoughts. 

Emily joined the team earlier this year to give her days some structure and to make a positive difference to her local community. She started out on our team of helpers, covering for others and then taking on her own clients. This was a massive career change from the world of IT but she adapted seamlessly. She took on a range of clients with diverse needs providing bespoke companion care to all of them. 

During this time we had a rollercoaster of new clients starting and staff holiday to cover. I was so grateful for Emily’s ability to be totally flexible, unflappable and to deal with all the changes. Sadly her regular client passed away suddenly, but peacefully. The family thanked us both for all our help and for making his last few weeks so happy. We attended the only funeral that has made us both laugh and cry, and then she was left with some time on her hands.

A heart warming gift from a client

“Dear Emily
I can't tell you how super it was to meet and get to know you. It was as if you were a friend who I had known for ages. Thank you for all your understanding, initiative and care. As you can tell I am so happy to have got to know you.”

One day earlier this year one of my clients called me on a Tuesday morning. I had been going in to see her twice a week for over two years. We would email each other between visits with any information that seemed important, and sometimes to say, “Remind me to tell you what happened today because it will make you laugh!”.

She loved the seaside so whenever I went to the sea, I would take her a photo or a video. She had been housebound for many years but she used to go and visit the seaside via a CCTV link that apparently anyone can access to look at Sidmouth beach. She would tell me about the waves and the people as if she had been there in person. I knew she was lonely and wouldn’t be seeing anyone over the weekend so sometimes when I was in Southsea, I just sent the photo from the sea with a little message so she knew we were thinking of her and she had some contact with the outside world.

And so we plodded on, but she never ever phoned so when she did my heart leapt. We knew she was poorly but things had got worse and she told me that the surgery had called her an ambulance. She sounded shocked and not sure what to do so I said, “Would you like me to come and help pack a bag?”, and she did so I went straight over.

“My mum lives in a care home and Penny has kindly worked with me to arrange for weekly 1:1 private helpers to spend time with her. The helpers engage mum in activities, take her out, do jigsaws with her and share a coffee and a chat. She has dementia and is very deaf, so having this 1:1 time with wonderful helpers each week is very valuable. I also really appreciate the feedback that I get each week, about how she is and what she enjoyed doing. Thank you so much to Penny, Jan and Amy. “ 

This is a lovely review from a rather different client. I never thought we would be going into care homes but the management at The Old Raven have been very kind to allow us in and to have some time with this lady. Each week we send her daughter a little report on how she is doing, sometimes with a photo. Jan takes her some flowers so they can arrange them together and so she has fresh flowers in her room every week. She tells her daughter about the visits and she calls Jan “The Flower Lady”. 

In the university holidays, Hook Home Help teams up with Mikey B Supppport Services to offer services that require engineering skills such as, in this case, using boiling water to make the hose pliable enough to attach to the tap to enable the jet washing.

I could have done the jet washing myself but I could not have jumped over that fence twenty times, (or even one time), and melted a hose to make it work. One of us has a calm and rational approach to problem solving and it is definitely him rather than me.

We are so lucky to have Emily on the team, even if it is just for a short time while she is looking for a new job. I have known Emily for a good few years and we have been coaching the Hook Runners morning training sessions together for over 3 years. 

Usually she is busy juggling being a mummy and a senior data technology leader, however due to a recent redundancy, she has joined the team to help some people in the community while she has some free time available.

This is a very special client. We have been on many trips together over the past few months and I have become very fond of her. We first met when she had fallen over and I was called in to make her lunch and let her daughter know how she was doing. For the first few days we were getting to know each other and the new system but soon she was chatting away and telling me about the whole family and a lifetime of adventures. 

Last week I had a message that started something like, "I am looking after my grandmother and wonder if you could help", which is a very normal text for me but then it turned out that the grandmother was in hospital and they needed help looking after the cat. In the interests of client confidentiality, this photo is not the client, it is my cat who is at least ten years younger and very much dafter and once had a phase where she only wanted to sit in this plastic bowl, until she grew out of it.

The Client Cat was also slightly eccentric with a tendency to violence if approached incorrectly. The granddaughter asked warily, "Do you know about cats?". Oh yes, I certainly do. By following the instructions we got along very well. The humans left a 5 star review and so did the cat because after a few days of me announcing that dinner was served and asking if he wanted any contact, and getting a resounding "No", on the last day he came over to me for some head rubs.

That was one job with many happy customers.

Look who I met today! I was supporting a client at one of the retirement flats in Hook and I met a gentleman taking his tortoise for a walk. The tortoise was having lunch outside and enjoying a bit of a stroll and a sunbathe. I stopped to say hello and found out that he is 56 years old. His owner had inherited him from his mum who had owned him from when he was little. The owner didn't seem much older than his tortoise.

I love tortoises. I feel grateful today for the sunshine and my new tortoise friend.

Hook Home Help is a small team of women helping people in and around Hook, Odiham and Hartley Wintney and Rotherwick. Home help can involve anything that isn't personal or medical care. It might be folding the washing, changing the sheets, helping with admin, cleaning, shopping, anything that makes life easier

Happy Easter to everyone who follows Hook Home Help. Today our hearts are warmed by the client who gave her helper an Easter egg for her little boy - who she has never met but just heard about! How sweet is this?!

They have only known each other for a month and they aleady have a special little friendship.

Hook Home Help is all about finding the right helper to look after the right person so that friendships can form and trust can be built. We are there to do the small jobs at first and then as the relationship builds we are there to listen when sad things happen and we are there to help when things get tough.

This week one of our other helpers went in to do some basic jobs and found that the gentleman had fallen that morning and was a bit shaken up. She was there to make tea and lunch and we told his daughter so that she could pop in later on.

Often in life the small things are the big things and we are there to help with both.

Hook Home Help is a small team of women helping people in and around Hook, Odiham and Hartley Wintney and Rotherwick. Contact me if you would like to know about what we do