First class care provider enters fourth year offering career enhancement to staff through Train Ltd

Prestige Care Group, which operates six residential and nursing care centres across the North East, is proud that its own apprentice academy is now entering its fourth year.

Prestige Care, which has been breaking new ground in the provision of high quality residential and nursing care for the elderly for 25 years, partnered with TrainLtd in 2019.

The aim was to deliver a first class learning and development environment for all our employees, with every person who joined the team who was new to care undertaking the care certificate, to enable Prestige to uphold consistency in delivering the highest standards of care to all.

This has also developed into offering our workforce first class career development opportunities, including NVQs and higher education qualifications.

Since 2019, Prestige has been able to introduce [a figure would be good here] more apprentices and we are assisting all our qualified nurses to maintain their registration by offering paid learning experiences towards their revalidation including direct paid access to the Royal Marsden manual of clinical practices online.

All our senior team at Prestige care group are qualified nurses (RGN and RMNs) including the director of operations and care developments who is also a well-respected author and researcher in the field of dementia care (Research fellow, Green Templeton College, University of Oxford).

Many of our registered care centre managers are also nurses and where not, all have vast experiences in the industry and all have the required qualifications and experience necessary to become registered by the Care Quality Commission, the CQC.

We promote a philosophy of succession planning with Prestige so that we are always looking to grow our next manager and senior managers from within our existing teams.

At Prestige, we understand that to be outstanding we need an outstanding, dedicated and motivated workforce.

The Academy is one way we, as an organisation, are aiming to deliver this workforce for you.

Prestige Care Group is combining its ethos of creating positive, person-centred communities with the use of the latest technological advances to deliver the very best modern care has to offer.

At Prestige, we understand that if you’re only just at the start of what can be a difficult journey to find high quality residential care for your loved one, or you have just started looking into residential care for yourself, there may be many new words, phrases and technologies that are completely new to you, that we’re proud to offer at Prestige Care.

Here, we explore these in a little more detail, so you can understand what they mean, when it comes to providing you or your loved one with the highest standards of care.

What is e-care planning?

E-care planning involves using software to plan our residents’ care, to ensure their unique and individual physical and emotional needs are met. This includes things like ensuring they receive the right foods, drinks and medication at the most basic level, but also accounts for things like supporting them to continue to carry out hobbies and interests that make them feel happy and fulfilled.  Because ecare plans are electronic and computerised, this makes them free of handwriting mistakes and mix ups that can arise when documents are handwritten as opposed to typed, creates easy to print pages, audit data trails and is quicker and easier for our carers to use than having to fill in forms. This gives them more time to devote to your care.

What is Tovertafel?

Tovertafel, also known as a ‘magic table’ is a projector which sits above a table, which enables it to become an interactive surface, providing games and tranquil scenes. The interactive projected games on the table are highly beneficial to our patients with dementia and related conditions, but can also be enjoyed by all of our residents. This is just one element that makes Prestige Care Centres relaxing, calm and tranquil places to be, ensuring our residents are able to fulfil their highest potential when it comes to social interaction and exercising their minds.

What is Snoezelen?

This is also known as a controlled multi-sensory environment (MSE) and is thought to be beneficial, soothing and calming for people with autism, brain injury, dementia or developmental disabilities. With Snoezelen, a person is placed in a soothing room, which is designed to stimulate various senses, using things like ambient lighting, soothing fragrances or natural oils, coloured lights or objects and sounds or music. Comforting fabrics may also be available in these facilities, to stimulate the sense of touch and create warmth.

What is sentes bathing?

This enables residents to enjoy a relaxing bath, regardless of the physical disabilities which may have previously made such a relaxing and therapeutic way to care for their personal hygiene very difficult. Sentes baths offer a reclining bath system, which enables residents to be fully supported in their posture when bathing. The baths have a side entry door to make getting in and out of the bath much easier.

What are Oomph-led activities?

Oomph is a National Lottery funded activity charity, supporting older people to carry out activities that are good for their emotional and physical wellbeing, whether it’s a gentle exercise class or a digital photography lesson. At Prestige Care, we have Oomph trained wellbeing coordinators, who are delighted to bring highly interactive activities and occupational programs to you or your loved ones. Well-being coordinators have their own development group supported by our operations manager Karen Cousins and the Oomph organisation, and we are constantly striving to bring what we term ‘activity lifestyle’ into the centres. Find out more at the Oomph website.

What are Caroline Walker Trust recommended meals?

At Prestige Care, we understand the importance of good nutrition to support our residents’ wellbeing. The Caroline Walker Trust exists to improve public health through good food and we follow its principles to encourage our residents to eat and drink well.

You can find out more at the Caroline Walker Trust Website.