Making Residents Truly Feel at Home

Moving into care creates many emotions for our residents – they’re often a little anxious, scared, overwhelmed and upset until they settle in with us and develop strong bonds with both staff and other residents.

At both Cramlington House and West Farm Care Centre, everything we do is centred around personalised care. Not only does each resident have a tailored care plan that ensures their specific care needs are continually met, we also respect that everyone is different, with different likes, dislikes and preferences and tastes. We also understand that it’s vital that residents continue in their normal routine as if they were in their previous home, as much as possible.

So, as much as this includes integration with the local community such as social club and garden centre visits, encouraging family and friends to visit whenever they want, and providing relaxing and stimulating activities, it’s also important to help residents really feel that this is now their home and treat it like their home.

This means we provide the opportunity for residents to do housework style jobs and tasks where possible, as this often is something that means so much to them to be able to continue to fulfil. For example, some residents often polish brass ornaments and home decorative items as this is something they did at home as part of their weekly housework duties. The care staff will go that extra mile too to ensure it’s very much like for like – for instance sourcing and buying some famous brass polish, Brasso for the task!

Another resident, Bill Whitaker, enjoyed doing the cleaning in his home before he moved in with us and, when he moved in, we bought him a carpet sweeper when he told us he wanted to be involved in cleaning duties. As he settled in and his confidence grew, Bill moved onto the hoover and is now known to say: “You can’t beat a good hoover!” as he’s seen hoovering around the home. It’s clear that his standards haven’t slipped either as he’s quick to point out to the cleaners if they’ve missed a bit!

At the home, he hoovers regularly and also uses our carpet sweeper that he loves! It makes him feel so happy and settled and doing such every day tasks are vital to his overall wellbeing and we are so pleased we can facilitate this.

Other residents often getting involved in folding and sorting the weekly laundry, another past time activity that they greatly enjoy, that’s important to their day to day wellbeing.

Such tasks might seem mundane but having in place a structured routine is a vital part of our highly personalised care. Including activities that residents have done for most of their lives before moving in with us into their routine really does improve their wellbeing and helps them to lead happier and more content lives while in our care.

It’s great to see our care team go that extra mile to ensure every resident is as happy as they could be – the smiles on the residents’ faces says it all!