Make an elderly resident’s Christmas by sending them a card, care home staff have appealed. The festive holidays can be a lonely time for those with no family and friends to celebrate with, says Aden Lodge Care Home manager Kim Hardy. So the home, on Long Lane, Clayton West, is asking the community to consider sending a Christmas card.

Kim said: “Staff do everything they can to make Christmas a special time of year for residents, while providing the care they need.

“A simple Christmas card to our residents will help make their Christmas that much more special.

While there are various positive aspects and associations related to the festive period, Christmastime can also result in loneliness becoming clearer for people to see. The Mental Health Foundation has found that 19.7 per cent of people aged 16 years old and above across the UK showed symptoms of depression or anxiety in 2014, while the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that there were five per cent of adults throughout England alone who reported feeling lonely either ‘often’ or ‘always’ in 2016 to 2017. 

Volunteers in hospitals play a vital role in improving the experience of patients and relieving pressure on frontline staff, according to a new report from The King’s Fund. 
The report, commissioned by Royal Voluntary Service and Helpforce, is based on a survey of nearly 300 hospital staff in England including nurses, doctors and support staff – the first time that NHS frontline staff have been surveyed for their views about volunteers.  

You have probably heard about the ways that technology can improve the way you run your care business. So what are the things you need to consider when choosing Care Management Software? 

It might be best to start by asking yourself what you want the software investment to achieve? Many factors will affect your decision, from inspection ratings, GDPR readiness to staff retention and morale. The desire to improve quality of care within the organisation must drive everything. 

What Do You Need from the Software?

Understanding the drivers is probably the best place to start. In other words, what parts of your business do you need to improve? For example:

Operational efficiency

Better care environment

Regulatory compliance

In a bid to ensure effective, coordinated, community-based support for people who have been diagnosed with dementia, a pioneering dementia advice centre has opened in Newcastle.

Designed to provide support and information services for people living with dementia, their families, friends and carers, the Centre, which is the first of its kind on Tyneside, is the result of a campaign led by North East specialist dementia charity, Dementia Matters. 

The Brunswick Village-based specialist day and residential care service provider has partnered with fellow North East charity, Newcastle Carers and sourced funding from The Ballinger Charitable Trust and the Lloyds Bank Foundation, to get the project up and running with additional support from local authorities and the NHS.

A care provider based in the Ribble Valley has been in touch with his first The Silver Line ‘telephone friend’, after volunteering with the helpline in a bid to help combat loneliness. 

Gary Derbyshire, partner at Promedica24, wanted to do more for The Silver Line after it was chosen as the live in care provider’s charity of the year.

The Silver Line provides information, friendship and advice to people aged 55 and over, open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. 

Gary, after completing his The Silver Line training and becoming a Telephone Friend, has recently made his first phone calls and said it is “one of the very best things” he has ever done. 

DAREDEVIL care home staff flew across the Tyne on a zipwire to raise funds for residents and charity.

Over £1,000 was raised by staff from The Oaks Care Home, in Blyth, Northumberland, after they launched themselves off the Tyne Bridge.

The home’s carers and support staff jumped from the bridge’s balustrades before zipping across the river on a cold autumn day.

The team included care assistants Samantha Porter and Linda Palmer, senior carer Sarah Geggie, care assistant Jessica Maxwell, maintenance man Chris Sogorski, senior carer Paige Gallagher, activities coordinator Natalie Brimelow, and care assistant Sarah Ferrow.

Local provider of at home and live in care, Bluebird Care, were headline sponsored of a charity’s ball, where all proceeds go to fighting chest, heart and stroke conditions.

Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland (CHSS) put on a night to remember at their first ever St Andrew’s Ball at The Hub set on the historic Royal Mile.

In true Scottish fashion guests were piped in to celebrate a night of fine-dining, ceilidh dancing and supporting the charity’s vital work of helping people in Scotland rebuild their lives after diagnosis of a chest or heart condition or a stroke.

Celebrity hosts, much loved weather present, Judith Ralston and Scottish comedian, Bruce Devlin made sure that everyone had a fabulous evening.

Regulators gave Richmond Nantwich Retirement Village the highest possible rating, putting in the top 3% of services in England

A retirement village in Cheshire has been rated as ‘Outstanding’ for its domiciliary care after a visit from regulators, the Care Quality Commission (CQC). The inspection report puts the Richmond Nantwich amongst the top 3% of home care providers in England.

Opened in 1996, Richmond Nantwich provides a range of independent and assisted living suites for residents aged 55 and over. As part of this the village provides personalised care packages for residents as required – employing its own domiciliary care team who can help residents with things including personal care, shopping, preparing light meals and accessing local facilities.

FATHER Christmas made an appearance at a Chester-le-Street care home’s festive fayre – helping to raise over £1,000 for residents.

The event at Pelton Grange Care Home, on Front Street, attracted dozens of visitors, including family and friends of residents and staff.

Santa’s grotto, jewellery and bric-a-brac stalls, homemade Christmas cards, cakes and hotdogs all helped raise £1,016.

The money will be added to the residents’ fund, which helps pay for events, activities and outings throughout the year.

Resident Florence Besford said: “It’s lovely to see you, Father Christmas.

Christopher Hogan-Hind, home manager at Pelton Grange Care Home, said: “A massive thank you to everyone who came along and supported our Christmas fayre.

According to an article published in The Guardian on 25th November 2018, more than 1,000 care home patients have died suffering from malnutrition, dehydration or bedsores. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/25/care-home-patients-engla...

These figures are from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) which completed an analysis of death certificates at the newspaper’s request. The ONS acknowledged that ‘it is possible that poor care may have been a factor in some of the deaths’. 

The ExtraCare Charitable Trust has recently invested in some Raizer emergency lifting chairs to help residents get back on their feet across 21 retirement villages.

The charity hopes that this will help reduce the number of ambulance call-outs its staff have to make for people who have fallen and cannot get back up. Falls are one of the costliest problems facing the healthcare sector, and it is estimated that falls cost the NHS about £2.3 billion annually.

Supplied by Yorkshire Care Equipment, the Raizer is assembled around a fallen person by a single operator. You can then begin lifting the person back to a seated or standing position at the touch of a button, allowing you to keep eye contact and maintain conversation with the person and make sure they are okay.

Quality patient care is the objective of every service provider. To achieve this requires considerable planning, long-term commitment and careful management within a tight budget. More importantly, it requires highly skilled and well-trained staff with a dedication to a career that can be extremely stressful.

A study by the Communities and Local Government Committee found that 48% of care staff leave within a year of starting. A lack of career development and quality training are common complaints when leaving. 

Investing in LowCost E-Learning can make the difference. 

Low costs

Care provider RCH was celebrating this month as it officially opened its first acquired brain injury centre in Bedfordshire.

Manton Heights ABI Unit, situated off Manton Lane in Bedford, will join the group’s ten older persons’ care homes and a supported living service in the east and south east of the country. 

The brand-new, state-of-the-art centre was officially declared ‘open’ by the RCH Care team and invited guests on Friday, 23 November 2018 and will provide life-changing support to people who have acquired or traumatic brain injuries – often the result of a range of illnesses or incidents such as a stroke or car accident.