A care home is a specialised home from home, care service offering residential, nursing, respite and dementia care for your loved ones, when the time comes that they need a little extra support.
What makes a care home stand out from the others? Aside from offering a supportive and caring environment, a care home should also deliver a fantastic level of service to its residents.
A Care Home should be led by a highly qualified manager and manned by trained and skilled staff, offering an excellent standard of care and support to their residents.
Although being trained and equipped with the proper knowledge and skills in caring for another is crucial, we should also not overlook the importance of being compassionate towards all residents.
The essence of a Care Homes is to make the daily lives of residents as pleasurable and comfortable as possible, they should have an activities coordinator to design an enrichment programme that is fit for each resident and encourage them to live an independent but highly enriched life. These activities may include:
Independence is always encouraged, residents have the freedom to choose which activities to be involved with and the team is in charge of evaluating if the activities are suitable for the residents’ abilities.
Care Homes are purposely designed to offer a safe and comfortable environment that feels like home to all its residents.
A culinary team who can prepare excellent meals from fresh ingredients on a daily basis is essential! The meals must be suited to the taste and palate of every resident. Consideration must be given in deciding which menu choices should be offered, making sure there is plenty of variation, while maintaining familiar favourites, showcasing a variety of hot or cold food, as well as soft and easy to eat selections, and following individual food preferences and dietary requirements.
Living life to the fullest means that aside from accomplishing daily activities, the residents of the home are encouraged to pursue their preferred pleasurable pastime.
Various activities are carefully planned for each resident. These activities are intended to enhance their daily lives, stimulate them to interact with other residents and enhance their sense of belongingness within their new home.
The activities diary should include events such as Bonfire Night, Saint George’s Day, Valentine’s Day and Burns Night. These special days with themed events and treats are something that all the residents can look forward to!
Celebration of birthdays and anniversaries should also be given great importance. These are wonderful reasons to be joyous, allowing the celebrants, families, friends, and other residents to sit back and join the revelry through specially prepared food and cakes.
Before an individual or a family considers a care home, they should determine if the home would meet their needs and expectations for all the services they are looking for.
To give you an idea of what a care home offers, here are the services that you should expect:
You should also become familiar with the type of care that a care home is registered to provide. It is crucial that the home follows a care plan for each resident whether that be for nursing, respite or dementia care.
Care Homes will encourage a resident’s family to be an active part of their care planning and will do their very best to respond to any changing needs and feedback they may have regarding their loved ones.
This type of care allows residents to live independent lives with as much or minimal support as they feel is needed. Since this allows the residents to be free from the strain of managing a household, they are able to enjoy social interactions with other residents.
This type of care is very crucial for residents with nursing needs, high dependency requirements and end-of-life care.
Care Home facilities should be fully prepared and equipped to care for residents living with dementia. This is possible through keeping up with training,understanding symptoms and common behaviours, being updated with dementia research and findings and most importantly making the resident feel comfortable in their surroundings.
A dedicated team should be assigned to care for these residents and work closely with their relatives to create a detailed picture of the resident’s everyday life; allowing the team to create a plan of care and series of activities that will help the resident live an enriched life filled with comfort and happiness.
There are many reasons for respite care: convalescence, relief for the family carer, temporary care needs, post hospital care packages.
Respite care packages have been designed to address all of these reasons. If recovering from surgery this could mean that they will then be well rested and recovered for their return home. It can also enable a family carer to have some much needed rest time too.
If you’d like to understand more about our Care Home and the services our dedicated team can offer you or your loved one, contact Ridgeway Rise to take a virtual tour.