I’ve been doing some work with My Home Life recently and this initiative, based at City University, has some of the answers to what care home residents want. MHL is aimed at promoting quality of life for those living, dying, visiting and working in care homes. It concentrates on the positive work that is going on in care homes – there are plenty of shocking stories of the problems – and how these home personalise they care they give, help residents and their families to feel in control and involved and also to help managers of home to support their staff. People want to maintain their identity, be involved in decision-making and feel part of a community whether they live in a care home or any where.

There is lots of work going on to improve what care homes offer residents. I’m also involved in another piece of work to tackle the high level of medication that has been identified as causing ill health and disorientation in many care homes residents.
There’s also good information that’s useful for keeping care home staff up to date with latest thinking, for example on dementia. I was managing a website for SCIE called The Dementia Gateway http://www.scie.org.uk/dementia which offers free content by topic experts, good free films on dementia from Social Care TV and helpful links.

We need care homes to reach out and involve the local community. For example, some have open days or get local schools in to work with residents. There is so much more that needs to be done to make sure that people who live in care homes are not forgotten.