October 19, 2026 - 197 views
A North Wales care home is paying staff to learn Welsh on their days off – so residents can receive care in their mother tongue.
Carers at Cartref Bryn yr Eglwys in Pentrefoelas are heading back to the classroom for the weekly lessons so they can communicate with residents in the language they know best.
The team, drawn from a dozen countries across the globe, is one of the first to take part in a new Bangor University-led initiative tailored specifically for social care workers.
Owner Meryl Welsby is funding staff time for the two-hour classes held at the home on Friday afternoons.
She says the investment is vital because 90 per cent of the home’s 30 residents are first language Welsh speakers, many of whom find it easier to express themselves in Welsh, particularly when they are unwell, in pain or experiencing memory problems.
Opened by Meryl in 1990, the home has 28 staff but only five of them are native Welsh speakers.
With recruitment proving difficult locally, the team includes employees from Nepal, lndia, the Philippines, Romania, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Shri Lanka, Vietnam, Poland, England and Scotland.
The aim is to help them build stronger connections with the residents and the community they now call home.
Meryl agreed to sign the care home up to the lessons after being approached by tutor Mair Rees, who lives in Pentrefoelas and whose two grandmothers were cared for by the home.
She works as a health and social care tutor for Learn Welsh - North West at Bangor University, a learning provider for the National Centre for Learning Welsh.
Meryl said: “Our involvement came about because the university understands that there are a lot of overseas social care workers in Wales and it would really benefit them to learn Welsh.
“It is an eight-week course, it is an actual formal course, and we are among the first to take part in the initiative.
“Everybody in a care home has contact with residents, their families, and also friends of residents, so on the course we have a mixture of cooks, cleaners, administrators, carers and nurses.
“The course focuses on verbal interaction rather than vocabulary and written word and it has been designed especially for the social care environment.
“Many of our staff on the course do know quite a bit of Welsh already, because we encourage them to use the Say Something in Welsh app, so they can greet people and things like that already, but this takes them further.
“I have already seen an improvement in their Welsh.
“I hear them greet people at the front door in Welsh now, which is really lovely, and they are answering the phone in Welsh, which is a big, big step.
“It is a funded course, but we are actually paying all the staff to come in on their holidays and days off.”
Meryl said her overseas staff were always keen to fit into the community, and the Welsh lessons were helping that.
She added: “Ideally of course we would recruit locally, so their first language would be Welsh anyway, but unfortunately it remains very challenging to employ local people, they are just not interested in care work.
“We advertise locally and nobody is interested so that is why we are forced to go and look overseas and we are a sponsor with the Home Office, so we sponsor nurses and carers to come over.
“Quite a few of the staff have been here for quite a while now, some of them have been here for five years, and they are here to stay.
“They live in the village and they understand how important it is to integrate with the community, and part of that is understanding and speaking Welsh.
“For many of those on the course, Welsh is their fourth or fifth language.
“They will have their own language, then perhaps Hindi and English, and some will have worked in Dubai so they speak Arabic and so they just pick up Welsh too, they just seem to pick it up straight away from the residents.
According to Mair Rees, she was delighted to be helping the staff improve their Welsh.
Mair said: “Both my grandmothers have been cared for here in recent years so it was nice to be able to offer something back for the care that they received.”
On completion of the course, the staff will receive a certificate recognised by the National Centre for Learning Welsh.
Mair added: “These courses are specific for their workplaces and teach the types of patterns of phrases they can use directly in their jobs straight away.
“They have been learning how to introduce themselves, who they are, what their role is, where they work, what they like, what they don’t like.
“And they are learning to ask what residents like, and what they don’t like, which is really important in terms of personal care.”
Sandhya Dahal, who has worked as a nurse at the care home for two years and is originally from Nepal, said: “I’m enjoying the course because I like learning new things and this will help me interact with my residents and get to know them better.
“It will also help me integrate with Welsh culture, and the course is great fun and our tutor is excellent.”
She added she was proud to add Welsh to the languages she already spoke which includes Nepali, English, Hindi, and Punjabi.
Carer Neethu Raj, who has worked at the home for nearly four years and is originally from India, said: “I am very happy to be learning a new language and it is important because I am working in Wales.
“Learning Welsh will be very helpful to communicate with the residents and their families.”
For more information about the Welsh courses available, people can contact Mair Rees at mair.rees@bangor.ac.uk or the National Centre at iechydagofal@dysgucymraeg.cymru
