My Home, My Time, My Choice

Stockport Council have been working together with Borough Care’s Bruce Lodge Care Home and Helen Sanderson Associates to explore how people with dementia living in care homes can have their care and support more personalised to meet their needs.

The project, called 'My Home, My Time, My Choice' has been running for over a year now and initial work focused on dedicated ‘one to one’ time for each resident and gave them a chance to take part in activities that they particularly enjoyed, alongwith staff who had similar interests.

Building on learning from the work undertaken so far, the next steps are to expand this to hopefully enable further personal time to be arranged through the help of volunteers, dementia friends and by working with local churches and faith communities, and exploring informal circles of support. The aim is also to establish group activities that reflect what is important to people and to ensure that there are a range of activities for people to take part in, either in the home or out and about in the community.

Councillor Keith Holloway, Executive Member for Adult Care Services, said:

“This work is essential to ensure that people with dementia living in care homes still lead an active life and become integrated within the community wherever possible. Person centred reviews help to identify what is working and not working for each person and this information is used to inform the future direction of the work and to ensure that everyone living at Bruce Lodge has a say in how the service develops. We hope this valuable work will be shared with other care homes in the area”.

Notes to editors: For more information about the project visit www.stockport.gov.uk/myhome

Supporting information Bruce Lodge are working directly with two churches to expand opportunities for people to go out, Initial success stories include Marie who now regularly attends St. Joseph’s Church in Petersgate, Stockport and has made new friends there – one lady from the church drops her off home, the staff are looking to develop a circle to further support Marie. Also, Doreen is attending Norbury Church at Hazel Grove, where she was previously a verger. Austin, Marie and May went to a healing mass at St. Joseph’s recently where they were anointed and then joined the congregation for afternoon tea.

By connecting with dementia friends, people living at Bruce Lodge are having more opportunity to do the things that matter to them. There is a clear plan to introduce dementia friends and match them with people who live at Bruce Lodge, based on personality characteristics and shared interests. The one page profiles developed with people living here and the dementia friends are invaluable in aiding this. Therefore people have additional hours through dementia friends. Helen and Ken who live at Bruce Lodge, have been out several times with Andy and Kerry, two dementia friends, for tea and cake in a local café.

click here for more details or to contact Bruce Lodge