Scott care spring newsletter 2014

Scott Care Newsletter Spring 2014

Care Services

A Decade Well Spent Caring For The People Of Kent 2014 sees Scott Care celebrate 10 years of providing care to the people of Kent and Medway. It’s been an eventful decade, full of triumphs and challenges, and we would like to take the opportunity of our anniversary year to share our story with you.

Scott Care is an initiative born from the vision of Julie Scott, and its journey began to take shape in the year 2000. At this time Julie, a registered nurse, faced the dilemma of both her parents suffering health issues that were spiralling out of control. When Julie’s parents became unable to cope for themselves, she realised she could not find a suitable home care service in Kent. This encouraged her to set up care from her dining room table at home. It was this personal experience of caring for her parents that drove Julie to eventually set up Scott Care.

In 2003 Julie started to build a team of dedicated care workers to help improve the lives of not only her own parents, but the people living in the Medway towns. In these early days Julie was hands-on, going out and caring for people herself. For Julie, the quality

of care she knew her parents deserved was the standard she was determined to roll out to the Kent community. Scott Care was built on the belief that all service users should be valued, treated as individuals and be given the full attention they deserve.

At the end of 2003 Medway Council advertised their Home Care Services Tender. We knew securing this tender would enable Scott Care to reach - and care for - more people in the county. So, in early 2004 Scott Care registered as a limited company – and ten years on we are celebrating a decade of care.

Needless to say we were successful in winning the tender for Medway Council, which was the first local authority contract to jump-start our journey.

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Throughout the last 10 years Scott Care has won a number of contacts with Kent Country Council and Medway Council for both home care and day care services.

In 2012 Scott Care was honoured with a top grading from Medway Council for our services to that area. The local authority changed the way it awards new suppliers and grades them bronze, silver or gold status depending on the cost and quality of their services.

Achieving gold status was an incredible achievement for us and signalled how far we had come from our beginnings at a dining room table.

Today, Scott Care employs over 150 care and support staff and offers a number of care options for Kent’s residents. Throughout our growth and the diversification of the services on offer, our ethos has remained the same – to help people in need of care to remain as independent as possible in their own homes. The individual is still

at the centre of the care we deliver and our expansion has allowed us to introduce more choice for our service users. As well as providing traditional care services, what sets Scott Care apart is that we offer a more lifestyle-tailored approach to care – helping to ease the pressures of daily life through services like dog walking, domestic help and accompanying our service users on social trips out.

If the last 10 years have taught us anything it’s that providing a flexible service is paramount. Scott Care prides itself on bending over backwards for what our service users want, and we will keep thinking ‘outside the box’ when it comes to developing our services.

Service users’ fulfilment is at the heart of our organisation and we will continue to listen to their feedback and ideas.

Looking to the future, we’re ready to develop our newest service for children and families. It’s really

Julie Scott exciting for us to extend our reach to another demographic and support more people in their daily lives. We thank everyone who has been part of our special journey and here’s to another 10 years of providing excellent care to the people of Kent!

Day trips for our visitors

A welcoming day centre in the company of others

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Prepared for any weather!

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Trips out to the pictures At Scott Care we know how important it is for service users to stay social and make time for leisure activities. That is why we’re dedicated to taking our service users on outings and day trips.

Most recently we’ve began something of a Scott Care film club, where we accompany our service users on trips to the cinema.

We’ve been visiting the Kino Hawkhurst, a stylish independent cinema with comfy seats and a relaxing atmosphere. Our service users have diverse taste in films - their recent favourites were The Railway Man and About Time. It’s lovely for us to see our service users enjoying themselves and the company of others and we look forward to our next cinema trip together.

ISO 9001: Quality management at Scott Care Scott Care recently underwent an ISO annual audit and we’re delighted to announce that we passed, which means we remain ISO 9001 accredited. ISO 9001 is the internationally recognised standard for the quality management of businesses. The auditor fed back that we had no areas in need of revisiting and, therefore, no room for improvement. ISO 9001 accreditation recognises the quality of our management and shows that our credentials have been verified by an independent third party.

At Scott Care we pride ourselves in the quality of the care we provide and the management of the systems we put in place. Better quality management helps us obtain more efficient ways of working that saves time and resources. This ultimately means that we can dedicate more time to our service users and better meet their needs.

Meet the team Julie Scott’s son, Adam Hannah, has wanted to be involved with Scott Care since the company was set up.

Not only did he experience firsthand how she met the care needs of his grandparents, but he also shared Julie’s passion for making her new venture a success.

Adam knew he could offer his IT, technical and financial expertise to Scott Care, however in the early days the business was too small to have any vacancies. One early morning, when he had just finished a night shift at a pharmaceuticals laboratory, Julie called on him to resolve an IT issue – that was in 2006, and he’s been with us ever since.

Within the last 8-years Adam has progressed from Administrator to General Manager to his current position as Financial & Technical Director. Not only has he succeeded in streamlining processes and making daily tasks run more efficiently at Scott Care, but he has also introduced new technologies to our service users. Because of Adam, Scott Care was one of the first care providers in Kent to introduce Call Monitoring, ensuring the safety of service users and carers at all times. He also introduced day care centre visitors to Skype, so they could keep in touch with loved ones, 3-D films and helped them use the Internet.

Adam’s hard work ensures that Scott Care can continue to provide a cost-effective, affordable service. What’s more he’s always looking into how we can keep improving Scott Care, and introduce new ways to enrich the lives of our service users.

Each quarterly newsletter we will include a feature about one of our team.

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During the last ten years Scott Care has introduced a number of services to support and care for people in Kent. We understand that different people have different care preferences, which is why we offer many care options and services to suit each individual.

Supported Living Service Our Supported Living Service is here to help our service users remain as independent as possible in their own homes. Scott Care staff will lend a helping hand with domestic chores, leisure activities and anything that can ease the pressures of daily life. No requirement is too big or too small – our staff can help with everything from food shopping, gardening and looking after a family pet to helping service users write and post letters, connect with loved ones via the internet and taking them on day trips with friends.

Live-in Care Live-in Care offers a reassuring and comforting presence to people living alone and to their families.

This service allows people who cannot fully care for themselves, to stay at home knowing they will be safe and looked after. We can provide short-term live-in care for convalescence, or long-term care to help people remain in their own familiar surroundings. Our live-in carers will provide one-to-one care, 24 hours a day – helping with everything from personal care and cooking to taking service users out and about.

Day Care Centre In 2012 we opened The Gerrard Martin Day Care Centre in Cranbrook, Kent. Our day care centre provides a welcoming space where service users can

receive care and support, spend their time in the company of others, and even learn new skills. We also arrange day trips with and for our visitors, and for those who would like a morning out, or need to run errands, we can accompany them to nearby towns.

Children and Families Service Our Children and Families Service can be drawn upon to support families in a range of circumstances. If a child has a disability or challenging behaviour, or a parent has a disability, or both parents work long hours, we can give helping hand at home. We can help with school runs, outings, education and socialising.

Our staff can also help with more complex needs such as rehabilitation after hospital, medical management at home and palliative care.

Staffing Solutions Scott Care can help with staffing requirements, from emergency cover to planned absence and everything in-between, tailored to meet each employers needs.

We can help to keep staffing levels up, providing staff of a high standard to care homes, nursing/residential homes, hospices and day care centres. Our care staff can be booked in advance for planned absences or short-notice shortages such as sickness. All of our staff are fully trained, experienced, DBS (CRB) checked and dedicated to care.

www.scottcare.co.uk 0845 680 0506

@ScottCareLtd