SPECIALIST FACILITIES
Attractive rural location for PMLD facility
Westwood Care and Support Group, a Yorkshire-headquartered care provider, has recently internally refurbished and reconfigured two two-storey buildings on the former Huntercombe mental healthcare site at Market Weighton in Yorkshire, to provide new purpose-designed units – one for residential, and one for respite care, for patients with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD) and complex physical needs. The Network’s editor, Jonathan Baillie, met Lindsey Bratton, the Group’s founder and CEO, and Mary-Jane Hoyle, the facility’s Registered manager, to find out more about the new buildings, and the thinking behind them.
The internal re-design and refurbishment of the two new residential care and respite buildings, named Fossdale and Langdale House, was completed last December. They are now awaiting CQC registration to provide full-time respite/residential care for people with PMLD. The thoughtful refurbishment of the buildings, which the Huntercombe Group – which moved out of the much larger, mixed acuity mental healthcare site in June 2015 – had planned to use as ‘step-down’ units, has given them a distinctly non-institutional, domestic feel. Mary-Jane Hoyle, who has particular knowledge of this service-user group, elaborated: “One of key roles of Fossdale House will be providing respite care – giving people the chance to mix and meet with others in a similar situation, and affording they and/or their families and carers a break. A number of residents, or ‘members’, as we call them, may visit for a ‘one-off’ break. Alternatively, they might visit regularly and decide they would like to live here long- term. We thus placed a high priority on making the living and other spaces non- clinical, homely, and therapeutic.” Fossdale House and Langdale House stand in a quiet rural location on the former Huntercombe site a couple of miles outside Market Weighton. They are leased by the Westwood Care Group, a private residential care home operator established in 2011 by Lindsey Bratton – an entrepreneurial businesswoman whose previous career roles included a spell as a veterinary nurse, and, latterly, a period spent at a recruitment agency placing education and healthcare staff in and around Hull. When I met up with her and Mary-Jane Hoyle, she explained that she initially established Westwood Care & Support Services to provide domiciliary care. She said: “The company became quite successful, and in 2014 I decided I wanted to expand its activities.” At that juncture, a former NHS building – which Lindsey Bratton realised had the potential for conversion into a residential care home, and was coincidentally located
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Fossdale and Langdale House, both internally refurbished and reconfigured in a £350,000 scheme.
close to one of Hull’s learning disability hospitals, Townend Court – came up for sale.
Difficult to place
“The building – formerly NHS offices – offered strong potential for conversion into a seven-bedded residential facility for young adults with PMLD,” Lindsey Bratton explained. “Such young people are difficult to place, partly because they need very specialised care, and, secondly, because of the lack of provision in our area for people their age. They may well be going through a transitional phase; coming out of full-time education, and sometimes the only availability is in an older people’s residential home. Some of those we provide care to will never be able to live entirely independently; they will always need a high level of care 24 hours a day, so supported living is generally not their best option. “Dales House, in Hull’s Cottingham Road,” she continued, “was Westwood Care Group’s first residential care home. My colleague, Mary-Jane Hoyle – who has been the unit’s Registered manager since it opened, but has now taken up a similar role at the new Market Weighton facility – is a
highly experienced social worker, with a diploma and a postgraduate qualification in social work.” In fact, I discovered soon after, Mary-Jane Hoyle has a 14-year-old daughter with PMLD herself; thus when Westwood Care Group’s search for a property suitable for conversion into a unit for young people with PMLD began, she was able to provide valuable input. She explained: “I have been a social worker for 20 years, and, having met Lindsey and been excited by her plans, joined Westwood Care from Hull City Council in 2013 to get Dales House operational and manage the home. With last December’s completion of the interior redesign and refurbishment of Fossdale and Langdale Houses, I am now the Registered manager there. Dales House, meanwhile, is now full. The six permanent members there, aged between 18 and 40, and with varying degrees of PMLD, have made it their home.”
A number of causes
Lindsey Bratton and Mary-Jane Hoyle explained that the causes of PMLD are varied – and range from conditions such as cerebral palsy, to brain injury. Mary-Jane
JULY 2019 | THE NETWORK
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