The carers and Residents at Darnley Court enjoy playing an important part in their local community. The home encourages an atmosphere of fun and inclusion and runs a weekly programme of events, which includes talks and demonstrations from local people willing to share their knowledge and talents. Performers from the area regularly visit and entertain Residents with songs, sketches, singing and dancing, and members of neighbourhood groups, volunteers and other locals often drop in for a cup of tea and a chat.

Assisted by suggestions from our Residents, our home’s Wellbeing Coordinators organise a varied year round programme of things to do. Many Residents take pleasure in hobbies, including baking, writing, gardening, dancing, painting, quizzes, and playing chess. Some enjoy being a member of the Residents’ forum.

By getting to know each individual Resident, our carers are able to encourage everyone to take an active part in the life of the home. Simple pleasures are hugely important: the morning walk, feeding the birds, a little light weeding, baking cakes for one of our fundraising tea parties, laying the dining table, arranging flowers or distributing the post each day. But we also know and respect that our Residents value having some time alone too and we want these moments to be as joyful as any other.

Food and Nutrition
Our hospitality team prides itself on making mealtimes a special, stimulating part of each day. In our homes, meals are as much about providing nutritious, tasty food as they are about enjoying a social occasion.

Residents are served three meals a day, as well as a mid-morning snack and afternoon tea. We use fresh ingredients, locally sourced wherever possible, with the emphasis on providing delicious seasonal meals. We understand the nutritional needs of older people and create meals that offer the correct calorific and nutritional content. We consider meals to be a fundamental part of every Resident’s care plan.

Eating is a social and an emotional experience, and our dining rooms are designed to create a relaxed and happy atmosphere, with menus that offer plenty of variety. We make a point of celebrating birthdays and special occasions, as well as national festivities such as St Andrew’s Day, Mother’s Day and Burns Night. We have built-in music systems to provide ambience and we dress our dining rooms in the evening.

We cater for special diets, but we’re also constantly looking for ways to make food and the dining experience as exciting as possible. There are more than 700 recipes in the HC-One cookbook and we’re updating this all the time. Our Taste and Try sessions are very popular with our Residents and they’ll often ask us to recreate a favourite classic dish. This can trigger a lively conversation and all kinds of memories, discussions and laughter.

Our Specialist Dementia Care Community (SDCC), based in Glasgow, offers an enhanced service which focuses on the welfare and wellbeing of people who are emotionally distressed by their dementia and therefore require specialist care and support.

Pioneering a new therapeutic approach to dementia care, our service has been built around the needs of residents to ensure the best care possible can be delivered.

The Carmichael SDCC is the first of its kind for specialist dementia care in Scotland, designed to provide a homely and safe setting for people living with dementia who find it difficult with communication and independence.

Our kind team

Our Specialist Dementia Care Community team defines the person by who they are, and not by the dementia they are living with, to deliver the kindest possible care and enhance the quality of life of those who live with us.

Working alongside the Home Manager, our Specialist Dementia Service Lead manages our team of skilled and experienced care and support colleagues. This includes Assistant Psychologists who work therapeutically with residents to provide understanding and specialist guidance as part of the team.

Specialist training

Our team has a specialist training package in place to support them in their roles. This training explores dementia in depth, wellbeing and occupation, as well as health and safety. These things support the team to be able to prevent, reduce or de-escalate situations that could cause stress or distress through things like conversation, distraction and wellbeing activities.

This specialist training equips our team with the tools to carry out a detailed plan of support for each person at our Carmichael Unit, so that we know how to best reduce the likelihood of having to use physically safe restrictive practice.

Alongside this enhanced training, on-going wrap around clinical support and advice is also provided to the team at Carmichael by leading experts in HC-One’s Dementia Care team. 

Our environment

We have an expertly designed low-arousal environment, complete with circadian lighting to support people living with advanced dementia.

The home's decoration is designed and tailored for residents living with dementia, by families and colleagues at the home, providing comfort, calmness and safety.

There are 'life stations' around the home that are designed to spark memories and give people living with dementia a real purpose in their daily lives.

For leisure and wellbeing, we have a library, cinema, games room, wellbeing room and garden room aimed to support wellbeing and interests of those living in the home.