The Old Rectory Care Centre

Care Speciality of the Home

The Old Rectory Care Centre is a specialist Nursing Home Service for the Long Stay/Short Stay care of the Elderly Mentally Infirm and as such has the care in place to provide for this specialist care service. The Home is set out to provide surroundings and a home for life for our residents, to assist rather than detract from the individual dysfunction caused by dementia in the elderly people over the age of sixty-five. In the home environment, we have attempted to stimulate the five human senses to enhance memory, reasoning, ability and sensitivity to the built environment.

Mary Marshall, 1998 (ref.) considered Dementia "...as a disability and as a disability is characterised by:

• Impaired Memory.
• Impaired Reasoning.
• Impaired ability to learn.
• High Level of Stress.
• Acute sensitivity to the social and the built environment".

Our service accepts these descriptions and considers the resident's surroundings should not rely on the person having any memory of where they are or how they got there. The structure of the residents' day is designed to create freedom of choice whilst detracting from increasing stress levels. The activity programme is an important facet of this structure.

The training, education and abilities of staff to ensure they skilfully address reduced cognitive function, reasoning and inability to learn effectively.

An orientation board is prominently displayed in the home where residents can see it. Each bedroom door has four signs to create multiple cues of sight, based on the quotation "Pink Doors and Knockers" a study carried out by Stirling University:

1. A number which the individual can remember (e.g. The house number of their last residents).
2. A knocker (different from the other doors on the corridor).
3. A photograph (of their choice, that they can remember).
4. Their name.