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SPECIALIST FACILITIES


A ground floor day room.


Hoyle said: “Individuals with PMLD have very significant learning disabilities; they’re often non-verbal, double incontinent, unable to hear, and wheelchair users. They tend to need adapted housing equipped with special equipment.” She continued: “Dales House grew quickly, and has done really well. We base our care philosophy on family life; we don’t have cooks, cleaners, or staff rooms at our units; they are the members’ home, and we all muck in. Each facility is staffed 24 hours per day, but with the members doing everything they can domestically, in terms of tasks like laundry and cooking. The seventh bedroom at Dales House,” Mary-Jane Hoyle added, “was used as a respite room, and, with my own social work background and experience managing the facility, it became ever more apparent to me that there was a really urgent need within Hull and the wider East Riding for residential care homes for people with PMLD.”


Adapting care as needs change As our discussions returned to Fossdale House and Langdale House, Lindsey Bratton reiterated that while providing respite care will be their primary role, some residents who become ‘really at home’ could live there for many years (subject to CQC registration for residential use, currently awaited). She explained: “We will thus adapt the care provided as their needs change.” Mary-Jane Hoyle next explained how Westwood Care identified the site in Market Weighton for development. She said: “We were looking to buy some land in the east of the Hull, which we have now acquired, and plan to build a purpose-designed unit there. However, with the process quite protracted, we became increasingly aware of the need for local young people with PMLD to be able to access respite, and the lack of available existing such care. Coincidentally, we were meeting one day, and the latest email about properties for sale from a commercial estate agent arrived on my computer. I noticed there were two units close to Market Weighton that were potentially suitable for both long-term and respite care, and day care.”


THE NETWORK | JULY 2019


The new ADL kitchen with wider access.


Major elements of the ‘refurb’ Lindsey Bratton took up the story: “To cater for the user group, and working closely with Alex Caruso of architects, Alessandro Caruso Architecture, and local construction company, Tokenspire, we have internally redesigned and refurbished the two units on the former Huntercombe site. Key elements have included widening doors for improved wheelchair access, slight reconfiguration of room layout, and installation of a lift.”


The two houses each have six bedrooms on the first floor, all with an en suite wetrooms; there is also a communal bathroom. On the ground floor are three different ‘lounges’ – a ‘TV room’, a day room, and a games room, plus a sensory room, an ADL dining room/kitchen, and a staff office, with a large wheelchair- accessible lift connecting the two floors. Mary-Jane Hoyle said: “Everything – all activities – will be supervised, but what we try to do is make the facilities the least ‘clinical’ they can be. We clearly have to comply with key regulations, such as on fire safety, but the aim is for our ‘members’ to experience a really homely feel from the moment they arrive.”


Varying pathways


She added: “We want our members to feel they ‘own’ the space, with the opportunity to be involved in every aspect – from cleaning and laundry to gardening.” Members allocated a place, Mary-Jane Hoyle explained, may come through an NHS care or continuing healthcare pathway, while others’ residential care may be privately funded – for instance via compensation for a serious injury/disability incurred in an accident. She said: “There is growing demand for residential and respite care for people with PMLD in the Hull and East Riding, and few really good facilities. Lindsey has a very-person-centred ethos, and it’s extremely important to her to be able to marry up the business side with providing excellent care. At Fossdale House and Langdale House there will be a minimum ratio of one staff member to two residents.”


Architect’s good ideas


While as a Victorian building that latterly housed an NHS community psychiatric team, Dales House in Hull had required substantial refurbishment, Lindsey Bratton explained that the buildings on the Market Weighton site had only been completed in around 2013, and thus required significantly less renovation. She said: “Alex Caruso – with whom we have worked successfully before – has led, very skilfully, on the design for the interior refurbishment of the two buildings, coming up with some great ideas for us. The priority has been to make the new homes as non-clinical, homely, comfortable, and welcoming, as possible.” Mary Jane-Hoyle said: “Given the physical limitations of some of the members, however, we have incorporated features such as a lift between the two floors, wider doors and corridors, ceiling hoists, change table facilities in bathrooms, and easy access to en suites through bedrooms.”


Sensory room


She added: “We will be incorporating ‘objects of reference’ outside rooms, for instance with a toothbrush outside the bathroom, and a plastic knife and fork outside the dining room, and deploying different ways to provide information, such as using Easyread, which involves using symbols that are easily recognised to simplify messages. We will also use Makaton (a language programme designed to support spoken language that uses signs and symbols to help people to communicate), which all the staff use anyway.”


Fossdale House and Langdale House will have wheelchair-accessible paved areas at the front, while a shared rear garden will be developed to accommodate a wheelchair- accessible vegetable patch, some animals, pet care, and a sensory garden. Mary-Jane Hoyle said: “Many members will really enjoy gardening and looking after animals. Through my own experience, I now have considerable expertise with people with PMLD and some of the challenges that they face, as well as the things they enjoy, which I hope has enabled me to contribute valuable input on the scheme.”


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