Care at home, that’s truly caring.

Westmorland Homecare brings kindness and individuality to every person they look after.

Asking for help can be difficult at any age, but it’s especially hard as you get older and perhaps can’t manage tasks you used to routinely do for yourself.

Westmorland Homecare staff can make things easier by helping with a whole range of things, whether that’s something as everyday and practical as keeping on top of the laundry and gardening, or providing vital support for people with dementia. Its aim is to help people have a good quality, active and independent life while continuing to live at home.

And caring for people in their own homes is something Westmorland Homecare staff are passionate about.

“There’s a massive side to care that we really understand and that’s trust” says Director Russell Crossley. At the heart of that is a commitment to treating people as individuals and not imposing a one-size-fits-all service on them. That means working out what clients want and need, and fitting around them. If they like to get up at 8am and that’s when they need assistance, then no-one will tell them that has to change to fit in with a care schedule.

And there won’t be a succession of different carers arriving each time because there’s one other very important aspect to this – relationships and continuity of care.

“They have the opportunity to build up an amazing relationship with their carers,” says Russell. And it works both ways. “We can build up an amazing relationship with them, because I think, in order for us to provide a truly outstanding service I think we genuinely have to really emotionally care about those people, rather than them just being a client or a number. We want to show them that they actually mean a lot more to us than that.”

Carers and clients build up strong bonds over the years, so that they feel like family and that is vitally important at any time, but especially over the last year when many older people have been seeing very little of the outside world and family and friends.

Making this work comes down to recruiting the right people in the first place, says Russell. “You can teach a person the skills that they need to do a job, but you can never teach somebody how to truly care for another person.

“If we recruit great people, great friendly, compassionate people, and then we look after our staff, it’s only going to mean a better service for our clients.”

‘It made me happy to know I’ve made her feel special’

Homecare assistant Amanda Sutton brought some real joy to 98-year-old Helen when she invited her into her own home for Christmas lunch.

Amanda has been looking after Helen, who has no family members living nearby, for two years. She thought it would give her something to look forward to over the festive period if she asked her to share the celebrations with her, and it resulted in a day to remember for everyone involved.

Amanda made sure everything was safely done and they exchanged presents, had a good old sing-song of favourite festive tunes and ate Christmas dinner together.

“We pulled some crackers and honestly I’ve never seen someone so delighted in all my life,” said Amanda. “She won a bracelet out of one of the crackers and she’s not taken it off! When anyone notices it, she tells them where she got it from.”

And it brought a lot of happiness to Amanda too. “It was just nice to see a smile on her face,” she said. “And then after, when the girls went into her on the following days, she talked non-stop about it, and I just thought she’s really enjoyed that, and it just made me happy to know that I’ve given her a day when she just felt a little bit special.”

A day to remember for Helen and Amanda

‘It made my day’

A conversation about Christmas with one of her clients got homecare assistant Charlotte Hinds thinking.

She had been looking after Peter for a couple of months following the death of his wife, and they had struck up a good relationship.

So, when it became obvious that he would be spending the day completely alone, Charlotte offered to take a Christmas dinner around to him on her day off.

“He told me that he was spending Christmas on his own and when I offered to make him Christmas dinner he was just so overwhelmed.”

When the day came, Peter had laid the table and put on his Christmas jumper in readiness.

“I took him a Christmas cracker, and I pulled it with him before I left.  So he had a little party hat on and he was very grateful,” said Charlotte. “I was really happy, it made my day.”

Peter truly appreciated Charlotte’s thoughtfulness. He said: “She is very good. It was very kind of her… and it was a good meal!”

Charlotte delivers Christmas dinner to Peter

Taking an ‘elfie’

No-one was left out of the festive fun at Christmas when Westmorland Homecare organised an ‘elfie’ fundraiser in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society.

It started out with staff dressing up as elves, but they asked the clients to join in too.

In normal times the company runs a monthly social club, but in the absence of that, they send out a regular newsletter to keep everyone included and up-to-date.

Director Russell Crossley said: “On the letter we sent out before Christmas we told all the clients we were going to be raising money and wearing elf costumes and if they decided they want to do it too, they could take a ‘s-elfie’. We’re going to do a collage in the office of all our wonderful clients in their elf costumes”