Staff at Home Close residential care home in Fulbourn near Cambridge are helping residents and local community members to stay physically strong in an effort to stop them coming to harm through falls.

The home, which is based on Cow Lane in the village, hosts ‘Falls Prevention’ classes every Thursday morning, which are open to members of the community as well as the people that live within the home. 

Every year, more than one in three people over 65 suffer a fall that can cause serious injury, and even death* so the Home Close team were keen to find a way to help local elderly people and their residents avoid these types of accidents.

Effective medication management has been an ongoing problem for care homes for a number of years. Reports show that almost 70% of residents have experienced at least one error in their medication regime1. Now, new technology is helping Avery staff tackle this serious issue by reducing the risks associated with using a paper medication administration record sheet (MAR) in managed care homes.

On average, residents in care homes take an average of 7.2 medicines per day2. With each additional medicine comes an increased risk of errors in prescribing, monitoring, dispensing and adverse drug reactions.

A local care manager is urging more people to work in front-line care having successfully forged a new career in care and secured a management position. 

Simone Dyer, 51, works as a Registered Branch Manager at Carewatch Leicester - previously branded as Always There Homecare - which offers care and support to people in their own homes to help them regain and retain their independence and dignity. 

Part of Simone’s job is to ensure staff have high quality training, are able to deliver personal care to clients and liaise with families of residents living in Leicester and the surrounding areas. 

CARE home residents were among those who took to the town centre to celebrate Armed Forces Day in Stockton-on-Tees.

Residents from Mandale House Care Home, on Acklam Road, Thornaby, and Ingleby Care Home, on Lamb Lane, Ingleby Barwick, were given front row seats to the celebrations.

Florence Jinks, 86, Annabelle Hubbard, 84, and Moira Hall, 77, sang along to war time tunes performed by entertainer Janie St John, including her rendition of favourite You’ll Never Walk Alone.

Research finds rates of reconnaissance, lateral movement, and exfiltration detections increased by over 265 per cent

UK, London – Vectra Networks, the leader in automating the hunt for in-progress cyber attacks, has announced the results of its Post-Intrusion Report, outlining key cybersecurity trends from Q1 2017. The research is based on data from a sample set of nearly 200 opt-in Vectra enterprise customers, looking at the prevalence of command-and-control (C&C), reconnaissance, lateral movement, and exfiltration attacker behaviours across thirteen industries.

Work has begun on a £200,000 investment in better access at a Berwickshire retirement housing development.

Bield’s Turnbull Court in Duns is to have four state-of-the-art internal platform lifts installed as part of their ‘Step Free’ project.

The work will be undertaken by Glasgow based Luddon Construction who will install the platforms over the next six weeks.

Ian Barclay, Director at Luddon, said: “Having worked with Bield in the past we’re delighted to be re-establishing this relationship with the work in Duns.

ROTHERHAM couple John and Jessie Senior have celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary.

Now living at Broadacres Care Home, on Naylor Street, Rawmarsh, the pair have been together more than 70 years.

They first met at a dance in Sheffield on 5th April 1947 and later married at St Paul’s Church in Arbourthorne, which has since been demolished.

Unlike the church, John and Jessie’s marriage is still standing strong, more than 65 years after they tied the knot.

Fellow residents, staff and friends at Broadacres Care Home helped commemorate the occasion with flowers, a personalised card, tea and cakes.

Jessie said: “We didn’t want a fuss so it was nice to share cakes and tea with friends. It was a lovely day.”

Fastroi will be attending this year’s Health + Care event at London’s ExCel Arena. This event marks a new phase in Fastroi’s 15 year journey, where they move from a market leading domestic operator to challenging on the international stage.

Fastroi are behind a technology platform for health and care workers to ensure a more efficient level of care for service users in their own homes or within the care home environment. The product is called ‘Real Time Care’ or RTC and gives companies running home care services a new way to manage their staff and improve the overall efficiency of their operation.

A PETERLEE care home opened its doors to visitors as part of the national Care Home Open Day.

Mayor Lee Cook was among the guests invited to Bannatyne Lodge Care Home, on Manor Way.

The community building event helped raise over £50 for the Alzheimer’s Society, after residents and staff sold homemade cupcakes and corned beef slices.

Care homes around the country were encouraged to take part in celebrating this year’s theme of friendship.

The aim was to build lasting community relationships and encourage intergenerational communication and activities.

The event also coincided with Bannatyne Lodge resident Liz Finn’s 59th birthday, when more than 40 residents and staff joined in the celebrations.

Public Health England (PHE) and the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) have today published “Everyday Interactions”, a report which aims to support healthcare professionals to record and measure their public health impact. 

The hero piece of content is our ‘Connecting Families’ film that documents the end to end experience of openPASS, and how it connects the person in care to their families. The film features our customer Melody Care and their clients, the Macro family, demonstrating an efficient, modern method of care giving, using The PASSsystem during a care visit, and most importantly capturing the emotional peace of mind gained by the family accessing openPASS.

Insufficient funding is the biggest issue facing the care home industry today, with cost as the main barrier to switching to digital medicine management methods, according to new research* conducted by Well Careplus.

Food costs continue to outpace RPI (Retail Price Index) and as such, the purchase of food and control of spend places an ongoing and significant burden on the care home industry.  A lack of visibility and control of food supplier pricing also exacerbates the problem because it ultimately means that care homes are unaware of the impact of the cost of their food purchase, until it is too late.  This leads to large amounts of overspend and waste.

Clifden House dementia care centre in Seaford has received a ‘good’ rating from the Care Quality Commission (CQC), following an unannounced inspection in May this year.

Inspectors found the service provided by Clifden House in Claremont Road to be safe, effective, caring and responsive, and awarded it the second highest grade.

The CQC assessors praised the staff, saying they are “kind and caring and have developed good relationships with people. They support people to enable them to remain as independent as possible.”

Edinburgh locals have been put centre stage at the Leith Festival as a play celebrating the anniversary of one of the areas landmarks has taken inspiration from lifelong residents.

‘Muriel of Leith’, which is playing at the Constitution Bar’s Red Room this week and explores the history and changing landscape of Leith, will feature a number of quotes from tenants at three of Bield’s Leith housing developments.

Produced by Edinburgh company SpartaKi, the piece will take North Junction Street’s famous mural as the centre for a story following a Leith family and their changing background.