Cornwall’s largest care provider is expanding and creating jobs after entering a period of “significant growth” despite the coronavirus pandemic.
Cornwall Care – a charity offering residential, palliative and dementia care - is developing its provision and expanding into new areas, places and specialisms.
The charity currently employs 1,500 staff and looks after about 650 elderly and vulnerable people in 16 care homes, together with another 500 in the community.
Now, on the eve of the organisation’s 25th anniversary year in 2021, the business has announced plans to enhance its community services, offer more complex and specialist care packages and put extra measures in place to ensure the highest standards of staff training and welfare.
To that end, Cornwall Care is embarking on a recruitment drive which will include employing more specialist nurses, practitioners and managers, appointing four additional executive directors and making greater use of technology to maximise expertise and available resource.
Tele-medicine and tele-care, for example, will be used to help reduce GP appointments and hospital admissions – thereby keeping people healthier, happier and independent in their own homes for longer.
Training and continuing professional development are regarded as key factors in achieving excellent standards and Cornwall Care has recently partnered with The Cornwall College Group to establish a new care academy.
As well as offering 16- to 18-year-olds the chance to do a two-year Level 3 Health and Social Care Practice course that involves practical work experience as well as classroom learning, the academy trains and upskills carers at every level.
“These are very exciting times for Cornwall Care,” said chief executive Anne Thomas. “We are entering a period of significant growth to achieve our aim of transforming the human experience of giving and receiving care. Even before the pandemic, we were actively looking at how we could use our financial stability to forge better connections, build on our strengths and widen our community reach.
“Covid-19 has clearly presented many challenges but, by necessity, has also helped improve skill levels, encouraged mutual support, increased public understanding of what we do and has helped make us more creative.
“Staff have had to learn how to manage infection control effectively, put stringent safeguarding procedures in place, communicate with relatives distressed at not being able to see their loved ones as much as they would like and discover new ways of working.
“Technology has come into its own and, whilst never replacing human relationships, has an increasingly important part to play in doing things differently and well.
“I’m very proud of how our team has not just coped but excelled in the last six months. These are very difficult times, but innovation often springs from adversity and we are all looking forward to a much brighter 2021.
“A year which will see us celebrating Cornwall Care’s 25th anniversary with a new organisational structure, more staff, excellent training, seamless care packages, effective partnerships and better use of our expertise.”
