For most people, living at home is a much preferred option to becoming a care home resident. Living at home offers independence, familiar surroundings and connections with the local community. While care homes can provide comfortable and safe surroundings, it is not the same as living at home.
Sometimes, it is no longer safe to live at home, or people have needs that cannot be met at home. At that time a care home may be your best option. But how you be sure? Hilton’s unique Home to Decide service provides the confidence that you are making the best choice for you.
Home to Decide is a service of up to two weeks that reviews your ability to continue living at home. The service starts at an intensive level of up to 24 hours for the first 3 days, then reduces in line with your needs. After 5 days we will have identified your anticipated level of support, based on your progress to date and on your anticipated progress to the end of the service.
Having supported over 50,000 hospital discharges over the last 10 years, we have seen improvements in hospital discharge management over that period. The average complexity of patients that we have supported following discharge has increased, meaning that more are given the opportunity to live at home. But there are still too many instances where people are assessed for residential care because their immediate needs do not match with the services available. This may be night support, medication support or some medical needs. It may simply be that the individual appears less able as a result of muscle wastage while in hospital. In some cases, patients acquire infections in hospital, such as Urinary Tract Infections (UTI) which can make them appear confused.
In other cases the decision that a care home is necessary arises following a set back at home such as an illness or a fall. It may take longer to recover from illness as we get older, but that does not mean that recovery cannot happen, if the right support is in place. Care home admissions can also be due to behaviour changes or challenging behaviour or following a bereavement. Sometimes it can be simply due to the person requiring night support.
Home to Decide ensures that people only enter residential care if it is the best option for them.
In some circumstances, residential care is the best option. Home to Decide will assess your potential to recover prior to the service starting. If it is clear that living at home is not a viable option at that stage, we will let you know and can support you in choosing the best home for you. However, in most cases we do successfully support people to continue to live at home, as has been independently verified.
A study by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust earlier this year identified that 83% of patients they referred to Home to Decide were able to continue to live at home. This is a service that succeeds in letting people live the life they want.
Home to Decide was specifically designed when we recognised that some people were entering residential care too soon. It is a highly flexible service where the level of support varies on a daily basis according to your needs. Generally, this means a reduction is support as the service progresses, but where the individual has a set back or is unwell we will temporarily increase the support.
Our approach to care and support is that needs to be enabling. When someone receives more support than they need, this can become disabling as the carer takes on tasks that the individual, maybe with support, could do themselves. Staying as active as possible, given any physical limitations, is the best way to ensure that you continue to live independently.
Our service begins with a comprehensive information gathering meeting where we find out about you, your background, current situation, support network, likes & dislikes and your goals & aspirations. From this we prepare a care plan that identifies the goals that we have agreed and how it is planned to achieve them. We will also review your home and identify whether any adaptations would be helpful, or whether any changes in layout would support your independent living. We can also arrange a risk assessment by the Fire Service. In some cases, the use of technology can be helpful. There are many technology opportunities including a light that goes on automatically when you get out of bed, use of Alexa to make hands free phone calls, activity monitors and front door cameras.
Home to Decide is based on a partnership with you. We believe that the commitment of people wanting to continue to live at home is a key reason for the success of the service. It is a short term service and only works with the individual’s commitment to agreed goals. We work in a supportive but challenging way to ensure that people get the maximum benefit from the service. As well as great outcomes from the service, the feedback from clients has been excellent.
Yes, it is absolutely suitable. We have had many individuals with a dementia diagnosis on the service. Hilton are dementia specialists. All of our carers have enhanced dementia training, we work closely with dementia organisations and we understand the challenges of independent living for people with dementia. In supporting someone with dementia, we would review the home environment in detail to ensure that it is as dementia friendly as possible. Given that dementia is a progressive disease we look at how the home can support independent living over the longer term rather than just at the time of service.
Technology support can also be important to keeping the individual safe at home. Supporting and advising family carers is integral to the Home to Decide service.
The service involves intensive one to one support, but the level of support required is dependent on the individual. It is a service of up to 2 weeks but can often be completed within 10 days. The first week, where we are providing the highest level of support is the most expensive. You can expect to pay more than a week’s fees for a care home in that week. Set against this, the cost of ongoing support is generally lower than the cost of a care home, meaning that the investment in Home to Decide generally covers its costs within weeks.
In some cases, where people have intensive ongoing needs, they prefer to stay at home even if it is more expensive than a care home. Home to Decide provides people with the option of staying at home.
Your family can be as involved as you want them to be. If you would like them involved in the initial session where we learn about you, that’s absolutely. You can also give your family access to our portal, which provides up to date information on what’s happening on the service, and ask that they receive the comprehensive report outlining progress during the service and the ongoing support that we have assessed.
In addition, you will have contact that you or authorised members of your family can contact at any time.
Where a Health and Social Care Power of Attorney is in place, we will liaise with the person or people holding the POA, and any family members they authorise,
The majority of people have a package of up to four calls
per day at the end of the service. Where an individual has the potential to
further reduce this over time. We will put in place a plan to achieve this. In
some cases, people may need some night support, or potentially live in care.
The amount of support that an individual receives from families can influence
the amount of external support. In some cases we provide regular or ad hoc
respite support to ensure that family support can be maintained.
Where an individual does require residential care, we will
support the decision making process to find the care home that best meets their
needs.
At the end of Home to Decide, we will advise the cost of ongoing support. This support will continue to support your ongoing wellbeing and independence.
Who Do I Contact to Discuss Home to Decide?
You can call us on 0333 200 1210 at any time of the day or night or email us on info@hiltonhomecare.co.uk.
We are very proud of our unique service and would welcome the opportunity to discuss it with you.