Dementia Care

Dementia Care at Homelea centres around the person living with dementia, aiming to make the experience of living with dementia one that is safe, reassuring and as stress free as possible. Not only is care person-centred around your loved one, but we work closely to consider the needs of the family too, especially during in the early days, because they know our residents much better than we do. Our aim therefore is that you feel supported, listened to and reassured.

You will find Dementia Care at Homelea is provided in an environment that is

• Fully staffed by people that care and are trained to understand
• Richly stimulating and uses person-centred positive validation techniques
• Well-equipped, spacious, safe, secure and uplifting
• Full of life enrichment and specialist cognitive stimulation exercises

Working one to one with our clients we prefer to focus on the positive things, such as what they are still able to do rather than what they can no longer do. We find this helps minimise the level of frustration or confusion that can accompany the system of memory loss. We want each client to feel abled, not disabled, and to know that life doesn’t stop because dementia came. This helps our residents preserve a personal sense of dignity and independence.

Because Homelea Dementia care is person-centred we’ll want to know about the things your loved one has always enjoyed doing. This helps us put together a personal plan for care that includes just the kind of activity that makes them tick. Besides this, we’ll also introduce a range of other activities they can participate in, if they wish, ranging from supervised cooking and sewing, to team board games and gardening.

The plan will also detail the little things we often overlook when life is normal, such as bedtime and morning routines, preferences for taking tea or coffee, grooming and resting. These all help immensely with providing a care plan that centres around a person.

Homelea has an extremely long track record in providing excellent Dementia Care but we’re not one for complacency. We can’t afford to be. Our goal is to provide care that constantly improves even as a person’s needs changes from day to day. We carefully match our clients with carers that can help them manage daily life and keep in mind that what might work well for one person may be not quite right for another. So our staff are trained to listen, to remain attentive and to value what’s unique about each individual. We are always ready to tweak and adjust things that are not working or perhaps no longer work as a client’s need changes.

If you live in the East Sussex area, then finding dementia care close to home can offer a level of reassurance. It’s one less thing to be concerned about both in terms of visiting your loved one and in making the transition to residential care.

In order to create this type of care we begin by finding out as much as possible about the person before the onset of dementia. The journey is very different for each person. It will have changed them perhaps in ways beyond what you could have imagined in terms of the way they engage with life, family and friends and personal interests. However, we want you to know that dementia is not the end. It’s simply a matter of learning to live differently.

As you will likely know, creating an environment that feels safe and welcoming depends quite a lot of creating one that is familiar. This is where understanding what a person’s life was like before the onset of dementia can really help. We will use familiar objects to help build stories that provide a level of continuity to help deal with the challenges of memory loss due to dementia. We will use these familiar objects and stories to help the person retain their vital sense of identity. It’s those little things that make them who they are that we’ll do our best to reaffirm – their individual likes, dislikes and habits. It’s about building a full and familiar picture that includes things such as the special and major events and people in their lives. There will photographs, objects, ornaments and items of clothing. We will work with you to try to match the ambience and layout of familiar rooms.

When we choose staff we look for dedicated, compassionate, caring individuals. Some staff come to us fully trained and experienced and you can feel rest assured that they understand both the up days and down days that go hand-in-hand with memory loss due to dementia.

They will do their utmost to ensure Homelea is a home from home environment with all the comfort and safety you would expect to find.

Our staff members feel so involved with care at Homelea that they often suggest new and helpful ways for providing care. We believe this to be important, both for innovation and improving care and for creating the kind of home that truly has a family feel, where everyone feels and is valued. Besides, staff often suggest things that residents themselves come up with and which we are always happy to try if it will help another resident.

Wherever they are in their career when they join us, we make training an ongoing and top priority at Homelea. Training covers all aspects of living with dementia, different forms of dementia and other conditions that are related, such as Alzheimer’s. This means there is always someone knowledgeable to which you can turn for advice and support.