Brent King Healthcare Finance

Hello, I'm David King and welcome to our late Summer newsletter of 2017.

One thing this typical British weather does is make the garden grow. So how do you maintain your care home's gardens? Do you actively encourage your residents to indulge in their gardening hobbies or does this fill you with dread in how to manage their pruning skills?

Care home owners I know who have the most successful gardening  'partnerships' with their residents have stated agreements in place so that everyone knows what they can (and can't) do.

Have a Gardening Club which, if you have an enthusiastic member of staff, can be run by them. If not one of your staff, then, if you use a local gardener then as them. You'll be pleasantly surprised how receptive they might be to the idea of running one. Residents then know who to go to for advice, equipment, seeds etc.

The difference it can make to a resident who has always been a keen gardener to see the results of their efforts flower and bloom can be a wonderful tonic and be a great benefit to their well-being.

Investing in the outside of your care home can be equally as important as an internal refurbishment. So if you want to discuss how to finance a garden project, please get in touch, we're here to help.

Best regards

David King

Channel 4's great social experiment
 
You've probably already heard about this one, but a recent programme run by Channel 4 with 2 episodes, called Old Peoples Home for 4 year Oldshas proved a big hit.

A group of ten 4 year old children and 11 people in their 80's were brought together over a 6 week period in new nursery set up in a retirement community in Bristol.

Prior to the experiment, all the elderly participants were suffering from varying degrees of depression with two of them severely depressed.

By the end of the 6 week experiment, all of them bar none were displaying no signs of depression and the most sceptical one in the group even admitted to feeling the children had brought 'great joy' to them all.

This is something I talked about in one of my previous newsletters (19th September 2016) where a care home in the US had successfully been sharing their facilities and activities with a nursery school and seen the well-being and happiness of residents vastly improve as well assist with costs of running the home.

With this experiment proving so successful, is it about time you considered different ways to enhance your residents experience as well as potentially help with the costs of running your care home?

Get in touch with local nurseries to sound them out. It could be the difference in what will set your care home apart from all the rest in the local area, as well as 'bringing joy' to your residents and working more closely with the local community.

Email David King today if you'd like to arrange a no obligation consultation to discuss ways you can improve your care home.

Valuing your Care Home Business

With increasing CQC legislation, together with reductions in local authority funding, many home owners are looking at the possibility of selling their homes, while others look to add to their existing portfolios.

Valuing your business can also help motivate staff. Regular valuations provide measurement criteria for management in order to help them evaluate how the business is performing.

This may also extend to share valuations for entry into an employee share option scheme for example, again used to motivate and incentivise staff.

If you're looking to improve your care home with an extension or refurbishment project, you'll first need an idea of the value of your business in order to see how it will increase the value with the work you want to have done.

Brent King can help you organise a valuation of your care home business and then put together a business plan in order to secure the best funding for your project.

Dentist Dilema for Care Homes
 
Healthwatch England carried out a survey from January 2016 to April this year at over 200 care homes, across 63 local authorities, looking at a variety of areas including available healthcare.

It was found that, although 4 out of 5 were deemed to provide good quality care, many of them are in a 'fragile state' and one particular problem highlighted was the difficulty finding dentists who would do home visits.
Staff at some care homes have learnt basic oral health training from a dental nurse. However, there are potential life-threatening conditions that poor oral health can pose on the elderly and this is a crisis that is only going to get worse as it gets harder and harder to source local dentists.

Have you managed to secure a dentist who will do home visits or is this is an issue for you?

t. 01489 782020
f. 01489 783111
info@bk-hcf.com