Dementia Care

Whether your dementia is in its early stages or advanced, Meridian can offer a care centre suitable for you. Understanding whether you require specialist care for advanced conditions will usually be guided by your local mental health team in consultation with social services. However, our care centre managers can also help you understand which care centre is suitable for you. 

Dementia in the UK

There are currently 16.4 million people in the UK over the age of 65. Of these, 820,000 are living with dementia.  It is estimated that around 10% of the UK's population with dementia live in the North West.  This is set to increase according to the Alzheimer's Society.  A third of those diagnosed are currently living in a care home with around 64% of those living in care homes suffering with some form of dementia. Current statistics show that around 163,000 new cases of dementia are diagnosed in England and Wales each year, that's approximately one new case every 3 minutes. 

Dementia is a priority for Meridian Healthcare as we predominantly provide care for people over the age of 65 yrs. We are striving to ensure that our environments are safe and comfortable, stimulate and protect those most vulnerable in our care. We have made development of dementia skills amongst our staff a priority. With this in mind, we have developed HARMONY. A programme to train staff to meet the changing needs of our residents.

Latest dementia initiatives within Meridian

Sporting Memories

Rievaulx House is taking part in The Sporting Memories Network Project. The Sporting Memories Network are working with Care Homes across Leeds to test out an innovative approach to reminiscence therapy, which will look back at the city's rich sporting heritage.

The project, funded by Skills for Care Workforce Development Innovation Fund has the support of Leeds City Council, NHS Airedale, Bradford and Leeds and Leeds Care Association. [photograph shows Sporting Memories Director Michael White with Bill Corbett - photograph courtesy of Sporting Memories Network] For more information on this see: Rievaulx House

Memory stimulation: Our latest care homes in Huddersfield and Stalybridge have stunning reminiscence facilities, including the Village Store at The Oakes (pictured) and our Huddersfield Town football memorabilia.

Lifestory books: for some years, Meridian staff have worked with families to create Life Story Books for each resident with dementia. The Life Story Books provide a ready reference of interests, likes and dislikes and give a 'pen picture' of the resident. The value of this work is to help us create activities and discussions which are of interest to residents.

HARMONY

We recognise that dementia is a specialist care provision with a requirement and growing need for specialist training and development of our staff.

HARMONY principles:

• H - Health and Well-being
• A - Active engagement
• R - Relationships
• M - Motivation
• O - Ownership
• N - New way of working
• Y - Your care, your way

We have introduced HARMONY at Kingsfield in Ashton, Tameside. So far we have had exciting results including:

• significant reduction in the number of unplanned admissions into hospital
• reduction in the amount of waste food
• reduction in the use of anti-psychotic medications
• improvement in sleep patterns
• improvement in continence
• greater engagement between residents, staff and visitors
• lower staff absence
  

Our staff are taught to be less task focused and more person centered in their approach to delivering care.  They are taught using formal training methods and experienced based learning. Staff are also supported to achieve nationally recognised qualifications in dementia care as part of the programme. 

Alongside the programme we have ensured that Dementia Champions are identified.  We also ensure that we include families and local healthcare professionals in the programme. 

We also make simple changes to the environment to provide coloured crockery (to encourage appetite), rummage boxes with suitable sensory equipment and items related to the interests of individual residents. 

HARMONY will be introduced to a number of other care centres during 2012/3. Please ask your care centre manager if you are interested in hearing more about this exciting programme.

If you would like a copy of our report on the results of our pilot programme, or to find out more about HARMONY, please contact us at: customerservice@meridiancare.co.uk