Jess is, in essence, the first person a family speaks to at the hardest moment – usually when they’re pretending they’re fine. She doesn’t rush anyone. Lovely doesn’t quite cover it.
Ginkgo has been in Blackheath since 2012, long enough to know that what makes this corner of south east London work is its people.
All summer, our Local Treasures series has been sitting down with them – and this time that meant the gardens at Rectory Court, where Jess Tettey has been the home’s admissions adviser for eleven years. I asked her about a resident whose life here looked nothing like the one she’d planned.
“She came in very clear that she wasn’t going to do activities, wasn’t going to eat in the dining room. She was just here for a rest. And then you walk past her in the corridor a few weeks later and she’s there chatting with another resident. Or you look into lunch and she’s at a table full of people. Or the singers are in and she’s sat on the front row. You just see them flourish.”
Cat Bryden, a financial adviser at Ginkgo, nominated Jess for the series: “Jess is, in essence, the first person a family speaks to at the hardest moment – usually when they’re pretending they’re fine. She doesn’t rush anyone. Lovely doesn’t quite cover it.”
Jess’s job starts long before anyone moves in. So that’s where we started too.
The first phone call
“When we first speak to families, they’re often getting in touch for a brochure or information about fees. I go into a bit of detail about that, but my first instinct is always to invite somebody to come in and have a look. You can give out facts and figures, but I think you just need to come in and get a feel for the place.”
I asked what people get wrong about care homes before they visit.
“People have preconceived ideas. Based on historic things that are in all of our minds. And then they come in somewhere like this and think: this isn’t sterile. It’s nice. It’s homely. There are no rules on visitors – people can come and go when they want, just like at home.”
Moving day
The part of the process nobody sees, Jess told me, is what’s been removed from it. By the time a resident arrives, every assessment and all the paperwork is already done.
“So that day is just about the resident arriving. No one’s pulling the family aside to sort admin. They’re just settling their mum or dad in.”
“And then a couple of weeks later, I can’t tell you how many times I get caught by a family member in the lift or on the stairs and they say: Jessica, I can’t believe we’re here.”
“Just: morning.”
I asked for the moment that makes the job worth it. She didn’t pick a dramatic one.
“When someone has been in hospital, had a really terrible time, and they come in here as a shadow of themselves. They get good care, good meals, activities, and then there’s that moment when they just walk past me in the corridor. Just: morning. Like it’s nothing. And I think, what you’ve been through. And for you to just be walking past me like that. I have those moments all the time.”
The job itself is bigger than most people expect. “There are a lot of layers to what I do. The inquiry side, the family meetings, the back-and-forth with families while we’re trying to make it work – people messaging late at night, calling at weekends. I try my best to respond because I know how important it is.”
The family who kept her number
Jess’s advice to every family is the same: don’t wait for the crisis.
“If there are things on the horizon that are going to make the current living situation difficult, go and have a look around when you’re not completely stressed. Find a couple of places you like. Get your ducks in a row.”
Then she told me about a family who did exactly that – seven years early.
“They’d visited for respite back in 2019. They found me years later and said: we just wanted to check this was still your number. A room came up, we got her in. The decision had already been made. It was just about when to put it into action.”
Before I left, I asked Jess the question every one of these conversations ends with: who’s her local treasure – the person or place that makes life round here that bit better?
“Dr Butler, our GP at Lee Road Surgery. She visits here once a week, and families are always so reassured when I tell them that. A lot of people in this area are registered with her. It makes the transition so much easier – knowing there’s a face-to-face GP relationship already in place.”
Kelly Powell, Local Marketing Manager
