A day in the life: Kailash Manor Care Home

By Katie Krohn

AS DETAILED a few issues ago, I am a new recruit to Virgin Money’s Health & Social Care finance team, and volunteered in one of our customer’s care homes at the end of March.

Our customer, TLC Group, welcomed me for a couple of days into newly-built Kailash Manor.

TLC is a family-run business, formed in 2007, with more than 500 beds across eight care homes in North London, Surrey, Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire.

This might seem an unorthodox thing to do, but others in our team had done, and I was keen to observe a day in the life of a carer.

‘Kailash’ means ‘one who bestows peace’, and is the name of a Himalayan peak.

The home’s web site states: ‘we offer a peaceful setting where diversity of traditions and cultures are highly encouraged, creating a strong community feeling.’

Kailash Manor is welcome to all, but its resident base is primarily elderly people from multiple Asian religions.

As such, it offers specific services including an in-house temple, Gujarati and Hindi speaking staff and Guajarati-vegetarian prepared meals.

I spent only a couple of days in the home, including an overnight in staff accommodation, but from the open, bright layout to daily songs and worship in the temple it almost had an air of wellness retreat to it.

The fresh, home-cooked cuisine was also a highlight ,with most residents eating together rather than alone in their rooms.

I came with some nervousness on arrival, but was greeted warmly by the hotel services manager and felt instantly at ease.

Each TLC home has a hotel services manager, and they are responsible for the catering, well-being, housekeeping, and maintenance functions. The home opened in the middle of December 2022, so is not yet full, but occupancy has steadily grown given the high standard of care, and first-class facilities.

When I visited in March there were about 10 residents on one floor, a mix of residential and nursing, and I spent the morning meeting them, speaking with staff, and shadowing care staff including observing the morning ‘bhajan’. A bhajan is a devotional song, with a spiritual theme, and they were sung to residents in their beds by one of the carers.

Hindu festivals are celebrated, including Holi, which occurred in March, and comes with its own dances and music.

Music does have a transportive quality, and despite having none of the cultural reference points, I found the music and shared traditions a comforting aspect of the home.

I attended the daily management meeting around noon. As an outsider looking in, this was insightful as to the rigour and discipline of providing care.

Daily tasks include taking temperatures of all served and stored food, detailing the daily well-being of residents, coordinating hospital visits, and reviewing care plans. Information was shared and recorded in a centralised IT system.

I spent the afternoon speaking to residents and staff, and attending chair yoga. I’ve heard operators comment that the level of care acuity in homes is higher than it would have been 20 years ago.

There are more complex care needs, and many residents I met had limited mobility, and there is a high level of training carers must have to manage these needs. For example, just lifting a resident out of a chair was only done by carers in the home with specific training.

I spent the night in the staffing accommodation of the home, which is a great benefit to Kailash meaning it can support staff new to the area.

As ever, the high level of design and cleanliness were on display with hotel-quality standards. I slept soundly.

My next day was similar to the first; trying to help out in whatever small way I could and asking questions. I did try to get some carers to open up about the stresses of the job.

However, many just exuded pride and contentment in what they were doing. One carer, who had a previous career in the civil service, enjoyed the ‘giving back’ sense she got from the job. You could see the personal connections between carers and residents. n Katie Krohn is a director of health and social care finance at Virgin Money.

You cannot go far in the sector without hearing of record-breaking staff vacancies, and I was wondering if doing this short visit would give me any grand insight into this.

Solutions discussed in the industry include attracting different demographics (from university students to part-time workers), improving pay and career progression, staff wellbeing initiatives, less governance and process for staff to work through, and overseas recruitment, just to name a few.

At the risk of stating the obvious, staffing is the biggest challenge to care homes, and Kailash is not immune to this, but they operate with no agency, and a strong staff base.

I have no grand conclusion, but from my admittedly narrow experience at Kailash, it is frankly just a very nice place to be and work.

This is undoubtedly due to the culture TLC have created for staff and residents. I’m reminded of the famous business quote that culture eats strategy for breakfast, which rings true in this context, but know is easier said than done.