fbpx

Care at Home Carers: Come into a Branch for a Refuel

All of our carers are always welcome to pop into any of our Care at Home offices for a refuel.

Take a break from a busy day at work and help yourself to complimentary refreshments in any of our branches.

We always have a range of hot and cold drinks and snacks available for you to enjoy!

Here are a few of our carers enjoying refreshments at our Wareham branch.

  

 

Employee Awards – March 2019

We are delighted to reveal the latest Employee Awards that have been presented to some of our Care at Home carers to celebrate their long service and impressive work at Altogether Care.

We would like to congratulate…

Caitlin Hughes 

Congratulations to Caitlin at our Care at Home office in Yeovil for achieving a Long Term Service Award for being with us for five years.

She is an outstanding manager who covers the Somerset area from our Yeovil Branch. She has also recently received an ‘outstanding in care’ from CQC.

Kellie Gumbrill 

Congratulations to Kellie at our Care at Home branch in Beaminster for achieving a Long Term Service Award to celebrate five years of working with us.

Kellie co-ordinates over 600 hours weekly, covering Beaminster, Bridport and Lyme Regis areas.

Slawek Barylak

Congratulations to Slawek for being awarded Carer of the Month from our Wareham Care at Home office.

Slawek has worked with the company for over nine years, covering the Swanage areas. He has been awarded this due to consistent feedback from clients regarding his kindness and caring approach that he shows to them.

Once again, well done to all our award winners and thank you for your amazing work!

A Time for Looking Forward, as Well as Back

Older people living in care homes need a number of things to maintain their physical and mental well-being. The opportunity to take part in meaningful activities and to have family and friends still actively involved in their lives are crucial.

Wherever possible, a positive and forward-looking approach is particularly beneficial. Later life is a good time to try out new experiences and learn new skills. You have the time to try out activities you maybe always wanted to have a go at but were perhaps too busy to do in the past. It’s an important role for care homes to ensure that later years are as active and fulfilling as possible.

The Wishing Tree

One of the new features we’ve introduced into our care homes is the Wishing Tree. Our activity coordinators ask each of our residents what they would like to achieve over the next twelve months. Each ambition is written on a label and hung on the tree. We then work with our residents to help make their wishes become a reality.

The intention is for the tree to become a focus for residents and that their families will encourage them to come up with ideas that could help them reconnect with their past and recall significant memories and emotions.

Creative Minds

Our extensive activity programmes also include Creative Minds art classes. These are tailored for care residents and involve visits from tutors each month to take classes in a range of art forms.

As well as being fun, these classes boost self-confidence and esteem. Learning new skills helps to keep the mind healthy through cognitive stimulation and maintains and improves motor skills.

We aim to help all our residents to remain physically and mentally active, and to get the greatest number of positive experiences possible from their later years by continuing to look forward, not just back.

Contact us today on 01305 300 161 to find out more or arrange a visit to one of our care homes.

Red Nose Day at Steepleton Manor

Staff at Steepleton Manor enjoyed dressing up for Red Nose Day on Friday 15th March to show their support for Comic Relief.

A New Home, Not a Care Home

People have different ideas of what life in a care home is like. Some fear a loss of independence and having their individuality hidden in a corporate style institution. But is this what care home residents really experience?

Concerns possibly arise because of the way that many care homes are owned and operated. As The Guardian recently reported many care homes are in the hands of large companies that operate tens or hundreds of homes. These corporations are often owned by financial institutions that took on substantial levels of debt to buy into the market.

However, alongside the large corporate players, there are still many smaller care home businesses. These are often run as family businesses or charities. Altogether Care is a good example. We are family-owned and operate three care homes alongside our home care services.

Luxury Residential Care

Steepleton Manor is one of our homes and could be described as a luxury residential home. It’s as far removed as you could get from any image of a faceless corporate institution. The setting is idyllic – a former country house nestling in beautifully landscaped grounds. And while the home is large enough to have all the care and social facilities you could ever want, it’s also small enough for everyone to know everyone else and for each resident to feel like an individual.

Independence is encouraged and supported. Residents can grow their own food in our kitchen garden and some even choose to cook for themselves in the Manor.

When residents come to Steepleton Manor we like to think of it as moving to a new home, rather than moving into residential care. The care you need is available, but the focus is on continuing a fulfilling and enjoyable life. Being smaller means that we know all of our residents as individuals and they know us too. This means we can work together so that everyone enjoys the best standards of care alongside the best possible quality of life. If you’d like to see what this looks like in reality we’d be happy to show you around Steepleton Manor and our other care homes.

Employee of the Month – February 2019

Each month, care home managers hand pick team members who demonstrate a passion for their role and go above and beyond to provide an excellent standard of care and support to residents.

Congratulations to Hannah at Steepleton Manor for winning February’s Employee of the Month!

Hannah is a very cheerful & kind-hearted activity coordinator, she can always put a smile on the residents faces with the exciting activity’s which include bus trips to the sea, Greek dancing, gardening club and much more.

 

The Modern Way to Deliver Care at Home

Mobile technology has revolutionised so many aspects of our work and lives. Our home care teams make many visits each day to multiple locations, so mobile technology is the logical way to support the work they do.

The Mobile Care Worker App we recently introduced supports our care teams at all points of service delivery. It means we can forget about completing paper forms and records during visits and focus more time on our care users.

The app guides our staff to each appointment using maps and directions. If there is anything they need to know to gain access, the app will tell them this also.

Once at the appointment, our staff check in automatically using their mobile phone. They can see an up-to-date checklist of the care tasks to be carried out and any other information about the service user that might be relevant. They can also be prompted to check whether medication has been taken and record any details that might help with adapting to the care plan to meet changing care needs.

More Efficient

Mobile Care Worker also helps us organise the care we provide more efficiently. Data is captured instantly from each visit due to staff being able to input information through the app rather than in the office. This means we spend less time entering data from paper forms and more time designing a better service to meet our customers’ needs.

We also spend less time designing visit rosters and can see instantly where all our mobile staff are. If it looks like they might be late for an appointment, we can let people know to reassure them that they haven’t been forgotten. Simpler rostering also makes it easier for us to ensure that people see the same care worker at every visit.

Mobile Care Worker provides another way to involve relatives in the care of their loved one, which can be very welcome if they don’t live locally. They can be given secure access to the system and be reassured that visits have taken place when scheduled. They can also be part of the discussion around designing the most appropriate care programme.

Technology will never take the place of personal interactions in the care delivery, but it can take care of all the things that help those interactions to be more effective.

If you or an elderly relative are starting to find basic household tasks a bit challenging, a care at home service might be just what’s needed to brighten life up. Contact us today on 01305 300161 to find out more or click here.

Some recent day to day activities