Home Care Services Extra Care Services

Assisting Extra Care facilities with specialist support

The benefits of living in an extra care setting include the freedom of living in the community as well as the security and support of a care facility. Extra Care can cater for people who have ongoing care needs, including age related infirmity, physical and/or sensory disabilities and cognitive impairments such as Dementia, Learning Disability and Mental Ill-Health. However many extra care residents have no care needs at all, but have the peace of mind of knowing that care is available should they become ill or experience a fall.

Our staff is recruited based on their commitment to caring for and supporting the residents. In addition, we ensure that our valued employees are trained in all aspects of Extra Care. Our Blackburn Dementia Extra care scheme, for example, provides enhanced dementia care training to all staff.

ICare is proud to have an extensive track record supporting extra care schemes with high quality and success. Currently, we provide services to over 320 people at 17 schemes across the Northwest and Midlands.

Developing Partnerships with Northwest Councils

Our contracts with local councils are strong, and we maintain excellent working relationships with adult social care and allocation panels in each area. In order to highlight capacity and promote effective placements based on each scheme’s specialisms, we attend placement meetings and demand management meetings together.

Our Blackburn Dementia Extra Care scheme is an example of our council partnership approach. All staff receive enhanced dementia care training. As a result of enhanced dementia training, all of our staff can provide appropriate support across the scheme. As part of our work with the Council, we maintain daily contact with health professionals, such as dementia nurses, to support multidisciplinary care. Furthermore, we work with landlords, residents, and families to plan needs-appropriate activities, such as games afternoons, film nights, singing, and bingo.

24/7 Extra Care services

The ICare Extra Care team is on-site 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to ensure your safety and security.

At all of our Extra Care locations, we provide first response to alerts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. To ensure staff can respond quickly to unplanned support needs, we use pendant, pull cord and help button telecare systems.

Taking an inclusive approach

Those living in Extra Care settings should be involved in decisions affecting their lives. To this end, residents and families are always involved in as many scheme meetings, forums, and social events as possible.

Through this inclusive approach, we provide a range of activities based on residents’ suggestions. Among residents’ favourite activities are pantomimes, fish and chip afternoons, world buffets, board games, singing, dancing, bingo, and film nights.

Providing a flexible, people-centred system

As extra care workers, we understand the distinct challenges of creating care plans for each individual. There are some residents who need extensive one-to-one care, while others only need background checks and well-being checks.

Using a combination of scheme-based staff providing day-to-day care and visiting care workers, we are able to meet the broad range of residents’ needs. We can then deliver our residents’ co-developed, person-centred care plans with consistency and effectiveness. This ensures that core staff are available when needed to provide effective and efficient support during normal working hours.