Why now?
The challenges facing the care and residential home sector are complex. Funding models, regulatory compliance and maintaining a clean and safe environment share equal weight with the importance of meeting the diverse needs of elderly people. Nationally, this situation is also exacerbated by a chronic shortage of trained staff.
In our principal catchment area of Great Longstone Parish, which includes the villages of Hassop and Rowland, over 30% of the population are classed as older people (65 years and over). We constantly manage a waiting list and increasingly find ourselves unable to accommodate people as quickly as we would like.
According to a paper published by Queen’s University Belfast, “One of the greatest challenges that care homes face today is ensuring that care home nurses are competent in the planning and delivery of their care.” This has always been something we have prioritised at Thornhill House and explains why we consistently rank as one of the highest performing care homes in the UK with the Care Quality Commission.
However, Thornhill House is now over 30 years old and has reached its physical and operational limits. There are too many spatial constraints to extend the building on the existing site and even if this were possible, there would be an unacceptable level of disruption to our current residents.
For these reasons, trustees made the decision to purchase The Grange which offers the potential to create a larger, purpose-built facility capable of meeting evolving care requirements.