Carer and residents

We believe a happy workforce leads to a happy environment in our residential care homes and we are committed to investing in our staff.

We start off by recruiting the right people from the start and go to great lengths in finding likeminded people who are genuinely passionate about caring for others. Of course we are looking for highly experienced individuals, but also adopt a ‘hire for attitude, train for skills’ approach. That means if we find an exceptional candidate, we will provide the necessary skills training.

We spent more than £350,000 on training in 2010. This investment spans a broad range of areas, including ensuring our homes have access to fantastic training, like specific NVQ, dementia and HR programmes.

We ensure that all our people are equipped with the right tools to do their jobs well and receive training specific to their role. For example, our dementia care nurses are fully trained in approaches endorsed by the Alzheimer’s Society and industry leader Dementia Care Matters. This includes life story work and managing unusual behaviours.

In addition each of our employees spends an intensive day at the Carebase Day School. This is where they find out how the residents are at the very heart of everything we do and learn about the Carebase way of caring for them.

Testament to the success of our people programme is being awarded the Care Employer 2010 accolade, and shortlisted as a finalist again this year. We believe this demonstrates that our approach is the right one.