What is dementia care?

In our care homes that provide dementia care, our care teams are available 24-hours a day. They provide personal and social care whilst also delivering support that offers comfort and positive engagement for people living with dementia.

People who live with dementia may also need the regular care of a nurse due to other medical conditions or the symptoms of dementia.

You can find out more information about residential care here or nursing care here.

RCH Care Homes’ approach to dementia care

Our dementia strategy, ‘By Your Side – Bringing Quality to Life’, supports our teams to deliver consistently high-quality dementia care.

By looking at the most up to date research in key areas of day-to-day dementia care we have identified five areas of focus which we think are essential to ensuring our residents’ wellbeing. 

RCH will deliver measurable evidence based, person centred care using cutting edge technology and best practice approaches in order to create an outstanding care experience for people who use our services and an outstanding experience for our dementia care workforce.

We developed “By Your Side” with five key areas of focus that are all being supported through the partnership:

Pillar One: Partnership working with family and friends

We understand that recognising and supporting the needs of family and friends is in helping us to provide the best care possible for our residents.

Pillar Two: Our home environments

We are conscious that people’s reality can be very different when they are living with dementia, so this part of our strategy focuses on our actual home environments. From the contrast in colours and patterns on fabrics and walls to lighting and signage — everything that makes up our residents’ living environment comes under the spotlight to ensure we create homes which support their condition.

Pillar Three: Nutrition, hydration and a mealtime experience

We will create a mealtime experience that meets our resident’s individual needs.  This key area spans the whole dining experience; from the preparation of home-cooked meals, how they are presented to encourage people to eat and enjoy them, right through to our dining areas and the creation of an environment that supports an enjoyable mealtime experience.

Pillar Four: Lifestyles, activity and meaningful engagement

This area focuses not only on activities that are designed specifically for people living with dementia to enjoy but also focuses on enabling people to retain hobbies and pastimes that they enjoyed in the recent past. Meaningful engagement is about creating opportunities where residents are able to live in the moment, be fully engaged in what they’re doing and be content; everyone wants to have a meaning to their day, and people living with dementia are no different.

Pillar Five: Specialist training

We are educating our teams in the latest research and approaches in dementia care. This will equip them with the expert skills and knowledge they need to provide high-quality care for our residents living with dementia.

What happens next?

We understand you might be unsure about what to do next, uncertain about your options and where to go from here. The care sector can be confusing to navigate and, combined with a wide range of different emotions and pressure to find a solution, it can be difficult to know where to turn.

This is why we pride ourselves on being there to provide help and support to residents as well as their families, friends, and advocates.

Contact a member of our team at your local care home, which you can find details about on our search here. We can have a chat about your personal circumstances and give you more information about our high-quality dementia care and our upcoming events which we run to support the family and friends of someone living with dementia.

We’re here to help.