September at Home Instead Mid Cornwall

September has a particular feel to it in Cornwall.

The school-holiday crowds may have gone home, but the visitors haven’t. The beaches, cafés and coastal paths are still busy, just with rather more couples and retired visitors and rather fewer families working around the school holidays.

Those of us who live here know that Cornwall doesn’t really close at the end of August.

It just changes gear.

And September has been a busy month for us at Home Instead Mid Cornwall too.

A new website — but still very much local

Our new Home Instead website is now live, and one of the changes we’re particularly pleased about is having dedicated pages for the individual communities we serve.

You can now find local information about our home care in Padstow, Fowey, Wadebridge, St Austell, Par, Lostwithiel and Bodmin.

It might seem a small thing, but being local matters to us.

Home care isn’t really delivered by a website. It’s delivered by local people, in local communities, supported by a team who know the area.

From negotiating the traffic in St Austell to knowing that Fowey in August and Fowey in February are two rather different propositions, local knowledge helps.

We’re pleased that our new website now does a better job of reflecting the communities we’re part of all year round.

Old friends, new faces and the return of our Parkinson’s Café

September also saw the return of our Parkinson’s Café , run with Parkinsons Cornwall and St Austell Rotart after its summer break.

It was lovely to see familiar faces again — and equally lovely to welcome some new ones.

The café is a chance for people living with Parkinson’s, their families and those supporting them to get together in a relaxed setting. There’s conversation, friendship, information and, naturally, plenty of tea and coffee.

Our next Parkinson’s Café is on 14 October, and new faces are always very welcome.

Helping people with diabetes stay safely at home

Diabetes affects a great many local families. Around 37,000 people in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are known to be living with diabetes, according to NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. Diabetes – NHS Cornwall and Isles of Scilly

And it becomes increasingly common as we get older.

That’s one reason we’ve been developing our ability to support people living with diabetes at home, including helping with monitoring where this has been appropriately delegated by local nursing teams.

Our Care Manager Claire, together with Mary, are qualified to train and assess our Care Professionals to undertake this as a delegated healthcare task.

It’s an important development for us.

Sometimes the difference between somebody being able to remain comfortably at home and needing more intensive support isn’t another large service.

It’s being able to provide one more piece of the jigsaw, safely and properly.

That’s exactly the sort of capability we want to continue developing.

Good care happens behind the scenes too

Good home care doesn’t finish when the Care Professional leaves the front door.

Behind every visit, our office team helps manage and oversee the care we provide — reviewing records, responding when something changes and making sure important information isn’t missed.

We’ve recently started using Unique IQ’s automated auditing technology to help us review care notes and electronic medication records more quickly and identify things that may need attention.

The technology doesn’t replace people. Claire and her team still oversee and check our care. It simply helps them work more quickly and effectively, and focus their attention where it’s most needed.

It’s part of what we mean when we describe Home Instead as a fully managed home care service.

There are Care Professionals visiting people in their homes, of course.

But there’s also a team behind them.

65 clients — and 65 individuals

We’ve also reached another milestone this September: we are now supporting 65 clients across Mid Cornwall.

We’re delighted that Home Instead Mid Cornwall continues to grow.

But 65 is just a number.

To us, it’s 65 individual people.

People with different homes, families, routines and interests. People who like their tea differently. People who want help with different things. And people with their own ideas about how they want to live their lives.

Our job is to remember that.

It’s why we believe in taking time over care, carefully matching and introducing our Care Professionals and getting to know the person rather than simply completing a list of tasks.

And next month…

October will bring something a little different.

We’ll be welcoming a group of fellow Home Instead owners to Fowey, where we’ll spend some time together sharing ideas and best practice.

We’re looking forward to showing them a little of our corner of Cornwall — but we’re equally interested in what we can learn from them.

Because however good you think you are, there’s usually somebody somewhere doing something you could learn from.

And that’s probably not a bad thought on which to end September.

Home Instead Mid Cornwall
Helping people live well at home across Mid Cornwall.