The first of a series of 15 dementia care homes planned to open across southern and southwestern England over the next five years by Archstone Lifestyle Care, a new sister company to builder of luxury homes for older people Archstone Lifestyle Homes, was officially opened late last year at Verwood in Dorset in an attractive, leafy location on the edge of the New Forest.
The new Archstone subsidiary company hopes the way that care is provided at the new Waypoints Verwood home, with residents looked after by staff and nurses expertly trained in dementia care, while still very much able to maintain their own independence, dignity, and choice, could “help influence the UK’s approach” to a condition that already affects 700,000 people UK-wide, a figure expected to grow significantly over the next 15 years. HEJ editor Jonathan Baillie reports.
Set in the small market town of Verwood close to the New Forest, Waypoints Verwood, the first in a series of 15 “Waypoints” dementia care homes planned by Archstone Lifestyle Care for locations across the south and southwest of England over the next five years, will house up to 40 residents at any one time. It will cater for two key groups of dementia sufferers – those aged in their 50s – contrary to some perceptions dementia can affect people of this age, and may even manifest itself in young children – and those in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. Established to provide a care environment where residents are encouraged to live the fullest possible life, maintaining a high degree of choice about, for instance, when they get up and go to bed, at what times they eat, and which activities they participate in, Waypoints Verwood will have a full-time staff of around 40, and a staff-to-resident ratio of 1:3 – something that care services director for Archstone Lifestyle Care Andrew Hart, a highly experienced nurse with many years’ experience as a charge nurse, told me was “pretty unusual, even today”, when I met him at the official opening event. Designed by Archtsone’s own architectural team (the company’s chief executive Martin Young is a trained architect), the new Dorset dementia care home began taking in residents in mid- November, just a fortnight after its official opening. It will, Andrew Hart explained at the opening, not only accommodate dementia sufferers deemed to be in need of “continuing care” by NHS doctors and clinicians specialising in mental health problems in thje elderly (such individuals’ care may be funded by the NHS on an ongoing basis), but equally patients whose care will be paid for either by the individual him or herself, or by their family or friends.
A new direction for Archstone
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