Care Planning for Person-Centred Care
Effective care planning is the foundation for providing good quality of life in residental care as well as day care services. We will talk to each person about their needs, preferences, life history, hopes and dreams, and well as use our own observational assessments. Family members and friends are considered to be our partners in care and are fully involved in care planning decisions.
Care plans then provide the written instructions for our team to ensure the care we deliver for the person is centred on their individual needs and wishes. Care plans are updated whenever the person's needs change as well as reviewed monthly as standard. We will also hold review meetings with you at a frequency of your choosing.
Contact us to request an example care plan.
Dementia Supportive Environment
The decor and furniture have been deigned with the needs of people with dementia in mind following evidenced based, best practice guidelines:
- Minimum 30% colour differential between furniture and flooring, and between flooring and walls.
- No communal wall mirrors
- Dementia friendly signage to assist way finding
- Disability compliant bathrooms
- Individually coloured bedroom doors to assist people finding rooms
- Individually chosen bedroom door posters
- Handrails
- Built in pressure relieving cushions on all lounge furniture
- All bedrooms with pressure relieving mattresses.
- Residents have a choice of seating areas including quiet spaces.
Free Access to Secure Outdoor Gardens
The importance of access to outdoor spaces cannot be understated for high quality dementia care. It can be extermely distressing for people to feel that they are trapped inside and not allowed out.
Crimson Manor provides continual free access to secure outdoor spaces, with beautiful views over Huddersfield's Colne Valley.
State of the art Nurse Call System
Crimson Manor uses an industry leading, silent nurse call system by Aidcall. Residents can call for staff assistance by pressing a button next to them in their room. The use of staff pagers for alerts creates a calm, non-instituonalised environment. We also have a range of additional devices available for residents dependent on their needs:
- Under mattress nurse call mats to alert staff for residents who are at risk of falling out of bed or need staff assistance when they get up. These mats will also alert staff if the resident stops breathing.
- 'Seizure alert' mats for residents at risk of seizures.
- Residents can be given pendants to carry if they need to call for assistance around the home.
- Falls monitoring devices are also available to be worn by residents at risk of falling.
- Resident bedroom doors can also be fitted with devices to alert staff for residents who need assistance when leaving their room.
MCA & DOLS
Adherence to the standards set out in the Mental Capacity Act is fundamental to quality dementia care. Click here for more information about the MCA and DOLS (Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards). These standards are extremely imporant in ensuring that people are supported to make their own decisions and are not subject to unnecessary control and restriction whilst still ensuring their safety.
Just because a person has dementia does not mean they no longer have the capcity to make any of their own decisions. We will support all residents and day clients to make their own decisions. Where this is not possible, decisions are made in the person's best interests in conjunction with family members.
If a person's residential care package amounts to a significant restriction of that person's freedom, e.g. they are not allowed to leave when they wish, a Deprivation of Liberty Safeguard (DOLS) authorisation is obtained from the local authority. Specialist social workers then regulalry assess and monitor the care provisions to ensure they are appropriate.
End of life care
Crimson Manor provides care for people with dementia until the end of life and has implemented the Gold Standards Framework (GSF). The Gold Standards Framework is a comprehensive national training and accreditation programme to enable care providers to provide a 'gold standard' of care for people in the last years of life.
Key principles of the framework:
- End of life care planning
- Reducing hospital admissions
- Meeting spiritual needs
- Assessing residents' stage of life
Dignity in Care
Dignity in care means providing care that supports the self-respect and emotional wellbeing of a person without doing anything to undermine it. Supporting people's dignity is a philosphy that underpins everything we do: care planning, the environment, our activities provision and staff training programme.
Several of our staff have been nominated as digniy champions to uphold the 10 point dignity challenge. They agree to:
- "Stand up and challenge disrespectful behaviour.
- Act as good role models by treating other people with respect, particularly those who are less able to stand up for themselves.
- Speak up about dignity to improve the way that services are organised and delivered.
- Influence and inform colleagues.
- Listen to and understand the views and experiences of people'."
Validation Therapy
Validation therapy is a humanistic therapeutic approach developed by Naomi Fell in America for working with people with dementia. Care staff use validation of people's emotions rather than the content of speech to improve emotional wellbeing, manage confusion and diminish levels of distress. Crimson Manor has incorporated this method within staff training for several years and it is the main approach we advocate for use with our residents.
Dementia Care Mapping
Dementia Care mapping is a well established approach for measuring the wellbeing of people with dementia in care settings. Developed by the University of Bradford it is now used across the world to improve the quality of life for people with dementia.
Crimson Manor uses dementia care mapping as part of quality monitoring and improvement, staff development and indidvidual care planning.
Health Services
Crimson Manor is a residential care home and therefore we do not employ nurses. People who require 24 hour nursing care will require admission to a nursing care home. However, many health needs do not require 24 hour nursing support and can be effectively managed when living in residential care. We work in partnership with a number of health services and professionals to ensure our residents receive the right support:
District nurses
Dieticians
Chiropody
Tissue Viability Nurses
Speech & language therapy (SALT)
GPs
Palliative Care Nurses
Physiotherapists
Falls Speciasts
Continence Services
Mental Health Support Teams
Bredesen Protocol - Reversing Alzhiemers
Dr Dale Bredesen was the first neurodegenerative disease researcher to publish peer-reviewed groundbreaking studies on reversing cognitive decline in Alzheimer’s disease. The Alzheimers reversal programme known, as ReCODE, was popularised in the best selling book "The End of Alzheimers".
The programme is based on functional medicine principles which aims to treat the underlying cause of disease rather than the disease presentation itself. Bredesen identified 36 unerlying causes of Alzheimers which he grouped into 6 main types of disease. Treatment is primarily through diet and supplements to address nutritional imbalances, system inflamation, internal toxicity, gut dysfucntion and other underlying health imbalances.
Residents who wish to implement this protocol will need to consult a functional medicine practitioner for appropriate testing and support. Crimson Manor will then fully support the resident to adhere to the protocol guidelines including strict dietary changes.
Medications
All care homes will provide support with the administration of medication. It is common for homes to use some form of dosset box dispensing. Crimson Manor follows best practice guidlines set out in NICE (National Institute of Clinical Excellence) and uses original packaging dispensing. Every resident has their own medication cabinet for their prescribed medications. We will also provide administration support for residents who wish to take supplements.
Residents who are able to administer their own medications and wish to do so, will have our full support and appropirate storage will be provided in the resident's bedroom.
Older people can often take significant amounts of medication. Safe medication adminsitration is therefore critical. We work closley with our dispensing pharmacist to ensure good medication management. Medication reviews with health professionals are held on a regular basis with the invovlment of family. Reviews help ensure people do not end up taking more medications than necessary and that the prescribed medications are appropriate.
Laundry
Laundry processing in care settings presents many challenges and has a poor reputation as a result. Lost clothing, damaged items and mixed up laundry distribution are just some problems commonly found in care. Yet effective laundry processing and distribution is an important part of providing dignified care.
Crimson Manor has several systems in place to help ensure that laundry is processed in line with washing instructions and distributed accurately. We monitor our systems and performance to ensure any problems are addressed as soon as possible. If we damage or lose any resident's laundry we will happily replace them or reiumburse the cost.
Hair and Beauty
Once a week we turn our quiet lounge into a beauty salon. We have a dedicated salon sink and barbers chair for hairdressing and use our reclining arm chairs for spa treatments. We arrange a qualified hairdresser for residents to have treatments of their choice. Relaxing music and aromatherpy adds to our spa setting.
Please note that the coronavirus pandemic has meant that visitng hairdressers have temporarily been susepnded [See Covid-19 statement]. We hope to reintroduce this service as soon as possible. Hairdressing is currecntly provided by our care team.
Pain Management Software
The PainChek app uses technology to intelligently detect if a person is in pain. The app helps us to improve pain management especially among our residents who aren’t able to communicate effectively if they are in pain as a result of their dementia.
Care staff use the app every morning as standard and throughout the day where necessary.