Loneliness Awareness Week

Loneliness Awareness Week was created three years ago by The Marmalade Trust to raise awareness of loneliness throughout the UK and to start talking about it.

This year the campaign focuses on reducing the stigma of loneliness and to promote #LetsTalkLoneliness

Many people will experience loneliness at some point in their lives. However it is known that older people are particularly vulnerable to loneliness and isolation which can have an effect on their health.

Avoiding loneliness in our homes has always been at the forefront of our work. Our staff create loving, social and active environments for everyone to take part in.

Parkland House have recently been accredited as an Eden Alternative home and joined the Eden Alternative UK Register.

The Eden Alternative is an American philosophy which compliments our vision for our homes. It is a person centred approach to care aimed to support residents play a full and active role in their community by challenging loneliness, helplessness and boredom.

We believe it helps us provide exceptional care and support from our team who are committed to promoting resident independence and well-being.

The Eden Alternative believes the solution to the three challenges are:

• Loneliness: loving companionship, contact with people and animals in and out of the home.
• Helplessness: create opportunities to give as well as receive care.
• Boredom: Daily life full of variety and spontaneity.

Help raise awareness this week and get chatting about loneliness by tagging #LetsTalkLoneliness

National Growing for Wellbeing Week

This week we are celebrating National Growing for Wellbeing Week, which highlights the positive connection that growing your own produce can have on your physical and mental wellbeing.

Evidence shows the benefits of gardening can have improve mental and physical health, confidence, concentration, communication and is a great way of bringing others together.

Our homes each have a Gardening Club who help tend to the gardens, repotting plants, weeding and flower arranging. The clubs are always well attended with those that participate and those that just like to watch.  

Parkland House have recently established a herb and flower garden on the lounge terrace. Taking inspiration from the recent Eden Association Accreditation, Parkland wanted to create a more personal gardening space. This has allowed everyone to enjoy the outdoors and grow some of their favourite herbs and flowers. So far they have grown strawberries, lavender and sunflowers for their ‘dig a sunflower’ competition.

Parkland House Gardening Club re-potting the terrace plants

We know summer has arrived when the hedgehog planters start to appear in the Coppelia House gardens. Coppelia’s Gardening Club re-use plastic bottles to create effective hedgehog shape planters so they may grow herbs and flowers. They have also re-used milk cartons as planters to fill with their favourite flowers.

Coppelia House Gardening Club Hedgehog Planters

We look forward to sharing more of the homes Gardening Club projects.

#NationalGrowingforWellbeingWeek #growyourown

Parkland House recognised as Outstanding by CQC

Congratulations to everyone at Parkland House Exeter, part of Peninsula Care Homes who have been recognised by regulator Care Quality Commission (CQC) as outstanding in four areas: – caring, responsive, effective and well-led. 

We join only 3.1% of England’s care homes who have an overall ‘outstanding’ rating.  The Parkland House team work so hard to provide the highest possible standard of care and we are so thrilled to be recognised for our work by the CQC, and to be rated ‘outstanding’ overall.

Peninsula Care Homes are delighted with the recognition of the hard work and continual journey of improvement Parkland House takes.

CQC inspected the home unannounced on March 4^th and 7^th and the report has just been published (soon to be available on the CQC website).  The report states that “people receive an outstanding, personalised, caring service.  People receive very kind and respectful support from staff who promoted their abilities, knew them well and genuinely enjoyed their company.”

Managing Director, Louise Arnold is thrilled with the outstanding rating and recognition of the caring and empathic care each member of staff contributes to the team led by Ann Boardman, Registered Manager. The comments within the report from residents, relatives, professional agencies are all high praise including “staff are very kind to mum…we can leave mum here and know she is alright”

Parkland House is a residential home for 52 specialising in caring for those living with a dementia.

Parkland House validated as Eden Alternative Home

We are very excited to announce that Parkland House has been successfully accredited as an Eden Alternative home and will now join the Eden Alternative UK Register.

It was lovely to meet Helen from Eden Alternative on last week’s inspection and introduce her to Parkland residents, staff and families. We would like to thank the staff at Parkland House for their continuous hard work, love and support to the residents at Parkland House.

Helen from the Eden Alternative, “It was an absolute pleasure to visit Parkland’s on Thursday. It is a lovely home and I am delighted I was able to validate it as an Eden Home”.

The Eden Alternative is an American philosophy which compliments our vision for our homes. It focuses on changing the culture of care, from one where ageing is seen as a period of decline to one where individuals continue to grow.

It is a person centred approach to care aimed to support residents play a full and active role in their community by challenging loneliness, helplessness and boredom.

We believe it helps us provide exceptional care and support from our team who are committed to promoting resident independence and well-being.

The Eden Alternative believes the solution to the three plagues are:
Loneliness is loving companionship. Contact with people and animals in and out of the home.
Helplessness is to create opportunities to give as well as receive care.
Boredom. Daily life full of variety and spontaneity.  Our homes to provide an environment where unexpected and unpredictable interactions and happenings take place.

We hope that you will support us to ensure residents live the best life possible whilst at Parkland House. We look forward to receiving the certificate of validation and Eden Tree plaque to share with the residents and staff.

Technology in our homes

Technology has now become a part of our everyday lives and is providing many great opportunities in the care home environment.

In most care homes and nursing homes you will find residents or staff using tablets or phones to play music or videos for residents. They may even be used to play games such as solitaire, chess or puzzles. You may also hear ‘Alexa’ taking commands to play certain playlists or ask questions during a quiz. Here is an article we found useful https://www.communitycare.co.uk/2018/10/18/talking-alexa-assistive-technology-can-help-adult-social-care-services/

The world nowadays is much more interactive and we are excited to be introducing a range of technology into our homes. So far Bramble Down residents enjoy iPad club and the Echo Dot Quiz time, so we would like to carry this trend across the PCH group.

We currently have an iPad for each home to use with a Google Chromecast which will enable staff to show residents their favourite movies,videos or music playlists. It will also be used for more interactive quizzes and games with images and video. We have also started to introduce the Amazon Echo which voices ‘Alexa’ to become a host to a range of activities.

Some of the requests Bramble Down residents have been asking Alexa to play include: Joyce Grenfell, Victor Sylvester, Frank Crumit, Harry Secombe, The Goons and Edmond Hockridge. We know one resident at Bramble Down has put an Echo Dot on his Christmas list!

We hope our staff will find the new technology useful,helpful and beneficial for activities with residents. We would like to encourage residents, families and friends to join in use of the iPads, Chrome Casts and Amazon Echo’s. We would also welcome your best troubleshooting tech tips on the use of the new tech, as most of us know it’s great until it needs an update!

We look forward to seeing the outcome the new gadgets provide in the homes.

Eden Alternative

Parkland House are hoping to become an Eden Alternative accredited Home. Why do we want to achieve this and what is the Eden Alternative?

The Eden Alternative is an American philosophy which compliments our vision for our homes. It focuses on changing the culture of care, from one where ageing is seen as a period of decline to one where individuals continue to grow.

The Eden Alternative is a person centred approach to care aimed to support residents play a full and active role in their community by challenging loneliness, helplessness and boredom.

We believe it helps us provide exceptional care and support from our team who are committed to promoting resident independence and well-being.

The Eden Alternative believes the solution to the three plagues are:
Loneliness is loving companionship. Contact with people and animals in and out of the home.
Helplessness is to create opportunities to give as well as receive care.
Boredom. Daily life full of variety and spontaneity.  Our homes to provide an environment where unexpected and unpredictable interactions and happenings take place.

We hope that you will support us to ensure residents live the best life possible whilst at Parkland House.

Parkland House staff completing Eden Training with other Devon Care Kite Mark Homes