BECA to host first awards ceremony this year

THE Barbados Elderly Care Association (BECA) plans to have a big awards ceremony later this year to honour the good work of nurses and caregivers.

This was revealed by President of BECA, Maureen Ward, following their first Home Owners Seminar of the year, which was hosted at Co-operators General Insurance yesterday morning. Ward told The Barbados Advocate that BECA wanted to host this ceremony so that the nurses and caregivers know that their hard work has not gone unnoticed.

“We’ve laid down the criteria for personnel and we’re going to give awards for Nurse of the Year and Carer of the Year,” she explained.

Secretary of the Association, Deborah Thorpe, expressed that nurses and carers of elderly folk tend to be painted in a terrible light, but believed that there were good nurses and carers, taking care of their patients and doing an excellent job, who needed to be recognised.

“So we want to reward them, those that go beyond the call of duty and those that have been with us for years. We want to award them and give them a pat on the back,” she said.

The president went on to reveal that she sees some room for improvement in the association, especially in regards to people’s attendance to meetings.

“I’ve stopped the meetings from every month and moved them to every two months due to the fact that everyone appears to be busy and the numbers could be better,” she said.

She explained, “Our meetings are usually the fourth Wednesday of every two months and we send out reminders, but we don’t always get everybody out, usually only 50 per cent.”

Surprisingly, the president noted that there was more participation in meetings compared to last year’s participation records. Regardless, Ward believed that there was room for improvement due to the fact that the number of nursing homes and senior homes have grown over the years, to over 60 homes, yet the membership of BECA is about half of that and has not grown for a few years.