About Birchwood Care Services
Family run and offering a truly personable approach, we provide bespoke homecare packages structured to meet the individual needs of each of our clients to support their independent living.
At Birchwood Care, we have over 30 years of healthcare experience. Our promise is to provide a fulfilling, independent life at home, ensuring as much independence. We create bespoke home care packages to cater for the individual needs of each of our clients. Our range of services includes assistance with washing, dressing and preparing meals, domestic chores including shopping and laundry, complex care and assistance with medication. We also offer appointment escorts and sitting services.
We employ genuinely caring and experienced qualified staff, who go the extra mile and treat clients with kindness and respect. Our Birchwood Promise acts as a constant reminder of what caring at Birchwood means and last autumn we launched Birchwood Smiles.
We’re delighted to permanently show the smiling faces of our staff behind their masks. Aptly named Birchwood Smiles, every team member wears a lanyard around their neck, with a large picture of their smiling face on it. This helps them engage with clients, even when wearing full PPE. So much of caring is about making a human connection and we want to remind our clients that there’s always a smiling face not far away.
The Birchwood Promise
With clients and their families at the heart of everything we do, our promise sets out core principles and benefits people will receive every single day they are cared for by Birchwood.
- You will be treated with kindness, compassion and respect
- You will always be encouraged and kept active
- You will always be cared for with dignity
- You will never feel alone
- You will live an enriched life every day
Because we promise to:
- Provide care that’s warm and comforting
- Provide professional, attentive, passionate care from qualified, enthusiastic people
- Provide the right care that’s best for your individual needs
- Always be there for you
Where we work
We cover the Tunbridge Wells and Tonbridge areas of West Kent. Unlike most other agencies, we also cover the surrounding villages, including:
- Bidborough
- Bough Beech
- Chiddingstone
- Chiddingstone Causeway
- Chiddingstone Hoath
- Cowden
- Cowden Pound
- Crockham Hill
- Fordcombe
- Hever
- Hildenborough
- How Green
- Langton Green
- Leigh
- Markbeech
- Maidstone
- Penshurst
- Rusthall
- Southborough
- Speldhurst
Not sure if we cover your area? Call us on 01892 863710.
What We Would Want
How we look after our homecare clients is how we would like to be looked after ourselves, when the time comes. We treat our clients with kindness, dignity and respect and offer them the very best care possible, from staff who are appropriately trained.
But we don’t just follow the care plan; we take time to listen to our clients and meet their emotional, as well as their physical, needs. And we always remember that we are a guest in their home, and respect their property and their privacy.
Your Care
Our clients are at the heart of our care, so we make sure you have the home care package that is right for you. Whether you are arranging care for yourself or a relative, we offer a no-obligation assessment to discuss your needs.
We then confirm your tailored care with you after you have had time to think about it; we want you to feel completely comfortable that what we are providing is exactly what you need. We also review your care package regularly to make sure that it continues to meet your needs over time, discussing any changes with you and/or your relatives.
Continuity
As a small agency, we are able to provide strong continuity of care. As far as possible, we allocate regular carers to each of our home-care clients, so our clients and our staff can really get to know one another, but with only a small team our clients soon get to know all the staff who work in their locality.
We provide a care folder in each of our client’s homes, so all staff know what care to provide and are informed about any updates or changing needs identified by their colleagues. Our staff also raise any concerns they have about their clients with the central team so we can make sure we continue to provide appropriate care, liaising with other health professionals as necessary to make sure all our clients have holistic healthcare support.
Our Staff
Our staff are one of the things that makes us different from other agencies. They are genuinely caring and interested in our clients, giving that little bit extra day in, day out. We carry out thorough recruitment processes, including checking police records and references, and provide a comprehensive induction programme, so that they only start working alone when they are ready for it.
All our staff have appropriate training: all our carers and domestic support staff have completed training in person-centred care, health and safety, moving and handling, safeguarding people from abuse, equality and diversity, dignity and compassion, food safety and infection control. The majority of our staff have, or are working towards, relevant care NVQs. All our carers have dementia training, while some have achieved Level 2 dementia training, safe handling of medicines, customer, end-of-life, sight awareness, diabetes, winter warmth and stoma care.
Our Care Home
Our central team operate out of the delightful Birchwood House Care Home in the picturesque village of Speldhurst. Many of the residents of the care home were formerly supported in their own homes by our at-home carers.
This cross over provides them with reassuring continuity; they know all the admin and management team, whom they see daily in the home, and they regularly see their former carers when they come in for training. The continuity and familiar faces make the transition to a residential home even easier for them.
“I’ve always found the staff very pleasant. When they call on me they are kind, caring and very pleasant. We always have a laugh too!”
Client
“People told us that staff communicated effectively with them, responded to their needs promptly and treated them with kindness and respect.”
Care Quality Commission Inspection Report, December 2017
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