Without one you don’t have the other

“I see my role as championing our staff and ladies and gentlemen who live in our home because without one you don’t have the other.”

That’s the approach Helen Lacey takes in her role as Home Director at Pine Martin Grange and it’s as an ethos which has served her well during her career.

Although care was something she came into later in her working life.

Helen worked in corporate event management and then after giving birth to her first child, she switched to more family-friendly hours and joined a local GP practice, which is where she received her first experience of care.

“I started doing phlebotomy and running Warfarin clinics, as well as assisting with minor operations,” Helen explains.

“I was happy doing that but when my children we older enough I wanted to return to full-time employment and got a job working in sales for a care company, and it all went from there!”

Helen was seconded from that role to become a home manager, right before the Covid-19 pandemic!

“It was obviously very tough, but I learned much, and I have always been the kind of person that likes coming into the office not knowing what will be thrown at me that day,” she says.

After being asked to commission a new home on behalf of a large care provider, Helen decided that she wanted work somewhere “less corporate” where she would have more autonomy and for a company which shared the same values as her.

And that led her to Dormy’s door.

She explains: “I saw the Home Director’s job advertised at Pine Martin Grange and I went for an interview with the Dormy CEO Helen.

“Helen answered the door in her nursing scrubs, so I immediately felt I was in the right place. Helen was realistic and pragmatic about how the home should be managed, and it seemed like a natural fit for me.

“The Dormy company values are inherently aligned with my own, so I couldn’t have picked a better place to work.”

Helen describes Pine Martin Grange as a “special place” with a “unique character” and real “community feel” and that everyone is focused on delivering the best outcomes possible for our ladies and gentlemen.

Outside of work, Helen, who has two children, enjoys swimming each morning before she starts work, yoga, cooking (she is self-confessed “foodie”).