Eagle Lodge

Eagle Lodge staff play a central role in creating and developing a positive and enabling culture where resident’s rights are promoted, ensuring they are active participants in care decisions.

All staff takes on the role of ‘Culture Carrier’, valuing and respecting residents while sustaining a positive relationship with them. When faced with challenges, a culture carrier maintains passion, energy and enthusiasm, and inspires others to want a culture that respects service users.

Managers and Care staff work hard to ensure residents are valued, respected and involved in decision-making.

Care Staff

• Demonstrate sensitivity to the needs of residents, respecting their strengths and values related to their age, culture, spiritual and religious beliefs, ethnicity and gender.
• Engage with residents to understand their values and aspirations.
• Work alongside residents in a way that maximises autonomy in day-to-day living and enables them to exercise rights. We never make assumptions about what is best for residents.
• Recognise and take steps to address the impact of social isolation and anxiety on residents’ quality of life, health and well-being
• Recognise practice that may compromise the residents’ dignity and respect, and take steps to challenge and address them.

Managers

• Act as role models in identifying and meeting the needs of residents. We always challenge poor practice.
• Act as a role models during day-to-day care and quality of life activities to enable residents to exercise their rights.
• Create an environment that promotes respect and dignity for residents.

Managers and staff will use a wide range of communication strategies and interpersonal skills to cultivate positive relationships with residents. These include:

• Unconditional acceptance

• Empathy

• Attending and listening

• Reflection

• Warmth and genuineness

• Maintaining boundaries

Care staff ensure effective communication by:

• Communicating in a way that is consistent with residents’ level of understanding, cultural background and preferred way of communicating.
• Communicating in a way that supports and enables the active participation of the resident and others involved in their care.
• Communicating with residents and providing information to promote independence and maximise choice.
• Communicating meaningfully with residents, and being aware of and systematically addressing external and internal constraints.

Managers support this by:

• Supervising care staff when overcoming particular communication difficulties.
• Developing our care staffs' understanding of the importance of effective communication in enabling residents to maintain their sense of control and independence

We believe that all parties involved in caring - resident, family and care staff - should experience relationships that promote a sense of:

• Security – feeling safe within relationships

• Belonging – feeling ‘part’ of things

• Continuity – experiencing links and consistency

• Purpose – having a personally valuable aims

• Achievement – making progress towards a desired goal or goals

• Significance – feeling that ‘you’ matter

Our Managers and Care staff ensure effective relationships are developed and maintained by:

• Working with residents in a way that respects them as individuals, and working in partnership with their families and wider support network.
• Promoting collaboration when working with residents and recognising their individual life story and values.
• Creating a culture of enablement, with a focus on knowing the residents' life stories and values.
• Using the residents' life stories and values to inform all care decisions.

We work hard to keep our residents healthy. Residents will be supported in having their health needs met and in using and accessing a full range of healthcare services.

Our Managers and Care staff pledge to:

• Undertake a holistic assessment of residents to determine complexity of care needs strengths and abilities.
• Use a range of physical and mental health assessment tools to support good mental health, nutrition, skincare, continence and pain management.

We believe that quality care should incorporate meaningful activities. Our activities programmes are designed to increase residents' self-confidence, self-esteem and social interactions, and add to the enjoyment of their stay.

We encourage our residents to participate in a variety of leisure activities and keep up their daily interests. Staff ensure that activity is integral to the care provided by Eagle Lodge, and not seen as an optional extra.

Activities within Eagle Lodge aim to:

• Enhance resident quality of life
• Maintain physical and mental well-being
• Encourage socialisation
• Encourage expression of feelings
• Maintain connections with the community
• Bring some fun into the day
• Encourage use of abilities
• Encourage independence and promote self-esteem
• Provide intellectual stimulation

Managers and staff ensure the provision of meaningful activities by:

• Asking residents about their interests rather than approaching activity planning with their own assumptions
• Asking open-ended questions about what they enjoy to find out what they like doing.
• Make sure residents are aware of the scope and range of activities available and that they understand the importance of the day-to-day activities that impact on their quality of life in addition to hobbies/leisure/crafts.

Our programmes include:

• Intellectual/Educational Activities: which stimulate thinking or memory
• Creative Activities: such as music or art which can enhance memory
• Personal care activities: such as dressing, brushing one's teeth, or brushing one's hair
• Functional Activities: such as setting tables
• Physical Activities: which target range of movement, strength, co-ordination
• Social Activities: which aim to promote interaction with others and the development of relationships.
• Spiritual Activities: are offered if appropriate and desired.

We aim to enable and support residents who experience problems associated with dementia, helping them maintain their ability, skills, expressions of choice, and emotions.

What we do:

• We document the life story of residents and use it to develop a care plan with them, their carer and others significant to them.
• We engage with residents and provide appropriate interventions to reduce the impact of changes and unfamiliar environments on care needs
• We recognise the emotional distress experienced by residents and its impact on relationships. Engage in a therapeutic relationship with the resident and their family to provide early support and interventions.
• We recognise that changes in behaviour are a means of communicating and are always an expression of unmet need.
• We aim to identify when residents are experiencing delirium, recognising the risks to health and well-being and responding quickly and sensitively to their needs
• We consider how the physical environment can be disabling for residents and take steps to create the appropriate individual environment. We provide relevant interventions for residents suffering from dementia.
• We anticipate and interpret changes in behaviour where their meaning is difficult to elicit by engaging with residents, their carer and others significant to them.

All residents stay in single, ensuite rooms. There are thirty-five bedrooms split across three floors.

There are seven bedrooms (including two flats) on the ground floor, and fourteen bedrooms on each of the first and second floors. Each floor has its own bathroom and small kitchen area that families can use to make tea and coffee. There is also a small lounge on each floor and a large communal lounge that acts as the “hub” of the home.

We have a well-equipped kitchen, dining area and laundry, and extensive gardens surrounding the home, including an enclosed “sensory garden” that residents can enjoy.

The Management within the home consists of the Home manager (the Registered Manager), Head of Care and Administration Manager. They are available daily from 8am through to 5pm weekdays and on some evenings and weekends.  Management are available on call in case they need to attend the home in the event of an emergency.

Throughout the day a Team Leader leads the shift and takes responsibility for the staff and residents. They are supported by a team of care staff. The number of staff may differ; this is determined by needs of residents.  We use an evidenced based tool to determine staffing levels.  Care staff work 7am -2pm and 2pm -9pm. Management staff are supernumerary.

Night staff are on duty from 9pm- 7am, they are also supported by an on call team leader if they need any further support.

We have an Activities Leader and a Salvation Army Chaplain who work closely with the care team to provide a service to the residents and to give them the opportunity to be active and engage in activities on a daily basis.

All staff are qualified and undertake mandatory and additional training throughout the year in order to provide a high standard of care taking into account current legislation, guidelines and practice.

The Directors of the Older People’s Services provide 24 hour on call support to the home.

Eagle Lodge Care Home - Key Facts