On 12th August 2022, Baillieston Community Care celebrated 30 years of service and the grand reopening of Bealach House Day Service.

Our CEO, David Reilly, said: “We support just over 150 people a week with a range of disabilities. We’re registered to support clients from the age of 16 onwards, so we have quite a diverse client group.

“We deliver just over 2500 hours of care each week to those people and we have a team of about 120 staff that work for the organisation that helps us provide that service in the community.

“We take referrals from both the Health and Social Care Partnership, and we can take private clients in as well.”

The celebrations were filled with entertainment, food, music, cold drinks and a raffle.

David said: “I think it’s such a valuable resource to local people.”

“People can have choice and flexibility when they come to our service.”

“We try to place the person at the heart of everything we do, and we can tailor a support package around their needs and desires on what they want to achieve to work well at home.”

“For us, that’s really, really important. We want people to remain at home where it’s familiar, in their local community and we can provide that very tailored, bespoke service to people and we get lots of people who maybe move over from traditional home care services within the city to more of a bit more choice and control for people.”

David said: “We’ve put in a brand-new kitchen, all new doors, facings, new flooring throughout the service, all new soft furnishings have been purchased so we’ve got new blinds, pelmets, nice new chairs, new lounge furniture, cushions, new artwork, and plants and things like that so we really have kind of overhauled the service.

“When we closed the service because of the pandemic, we were closed for a while and then we reopened we felt it had become a bit dated and we thought we had to do something to freshen the place up.

“It has been funders who have been very generous and donated money to the organisation to pay for that refurb, and probably it’s in excess of £40,000 that it’s cost us, but the place is looking fantastic.”

He added: “When the clients came back into the service they just absolutely loved it and it’s created a much more relaxed and welcoming environment and I think it’s more conducive with the type of people we’re supporting.”

“All our clients at Bealach House have a diagnosis of dementia so it was really important to us that we created a nice calming, peaceful and modern facility and I think that that’s what we’ve created for our clients and particularly for our staff as well to have a nice environment for them to work in.”

We were also filming some scenes in and around the Day Service for a project that we have been working hard on over the past couple of months. Connor McFarlane, who is our Communications and Engagement Officer, said: ‘It was an absolute honour to work on and take part in a project that will mark this fantastic and historical event. We believe this project really tells the story of Baillieston Community Care’s history and how we got to where we are today. We can’t wait to share it with everyone.”

David Linden, MP for Glasgow East, was also in attendance. David cut the ribbon to reopen the newly refurbished Bealach House Day Service.