HC-One’s Sabrina Community Team wins Care Team of the Year Award at the National Care Awards 2024HC-One’s Sabrina Community Team at Meadow Bank Care Home, in Preston, Lancashire, was triumphant in being crowned the winner of the Care Team of the Year Award at the National Care Awards 2024.

The awards ceremony took place at the Platinum Suite, Excel in London on Friday, November 29, 2024. The National Care Awards marked the 26th year of the awards, which were organised by leading social care publication Caring Times Magazine. 

The Sabrina Community Team were nominated for the ‘Care Team of the Year Award’ by Natasha Wilson, Dementia Care Manager at HC-One. The Sabrina Community Team were announced as the winners of the Care Team of the Year Award, as they have developed and maintained an outstanding standard of care and team ethos at Meadow Bank Care Home.

The Sabrina Community Team at Meadow Bank Care Home to provide the home’s Specialist Dementia Care Community (SDCC) which offers an enhanced service by focusing on the welfare and wellbeing of people who are emotionally distressed by their dementia and therefore require specialist care and support.

‘Sabrina’, Meadow Bank’s Specialist Dementia Care Community (SDCC), aims to become a national model, reshaping dementia care for people with complex needs and easing pressure on NHS and social care services. The team works hard to find out what might trigger or cause individuals to feel upset or angry, so that they can try to prevent distress being experienced.

The Sabrina team use specialist techniques and approaches to reduce people’s stress and distress, including life story work, appreciative inquiry, horticulture activities, Namaste care and functional analysis. 

Based on a positive behaviour support methodology, the team interprets distress as a communication of need, and by meeting their needs residents living at Sabrina have a real quality to their lives. As a result of this holistic approach whereby psychosocial interventions are viewed as a first resort, there have been significant reductions in PRN benzodiazepine medication usage and a reduction in distress incidents.

The Sabrina community has an above average staffing ratio and the community’s team comprises of Assistant Psychologists who analyse behaviour to understand the reasons for a person’s distress and a team of Therapeutic Wellbeing Practitioners who provide leadership to ensure residents have both quality of care and a quality of life. An SDCC understands that if a person is distressed by their experience of dementia, their distress can be resolved if they are engaged in their favourite pastimes - be that watching football or listening to music.

Sabrina also provides therapy and sensory areas, as well as activity rooms and a lovely dementia-friendly garden. The community has been designed to feel like a ‘home from home’. Relatives are actively welcomed to join their loved ones in the communal spaces, which includes a cinema room and tearoom. This enables families to once more be together in peaceful and joyful settings.

The National Care Awards consisted of 28 awards covering a wide range of areas of the social care sector. The awards provided the opportunity to celebrate and highlight excellence, rewarding those individuals who work tirelessly to provide consistently outstanding care. 

Commenting on the team’s win, Anne-Marie Potter, Specialist Dementia Service Lead at Meadow Bank’s Sabrina Community, said: 

“We are proud and humbled to have been named as a winner of the ‘Care Team of the Year Award’ category at the National Care Awards 2024.

“We aim to provide a ‘home from home’ for our residents and their families. The team is continually evolving its approach to ensure that we deliver promising results. We are delighted that our Sabrina SDCC therapeutic community is leading the way in specialist dementia care.

“It is an honour to lead my colleagues to ensure good quality care and support is provided to residents, their families and colleagues in the Sabrina Community at Meadow Bank Care Home.”

Professor Graham Stokes, HC-One’s Director of Dementia and Specialist Services innovation, paid tribute to the Sabrina Community Team, saying:

“The improvement we see in the residents living in the specialist community is achieved by a team dedicated to think differently, who define people by who they are and not by the dementia they are living with, and who build compassionate relationships with those they care for. This requires curiosity, understanding and a passion for all they do to give people living with dementia what they have not had for many, many months, namely peace of mind.”

HC-One had eight finalists shortlisted across a variety of award categories at the National Care Awards 2024, who were chosen in recognition of their hard work, kind care shown to residents, relatives and colleagues as well as the dedication and passion they show day-to-day to ensure the people they support receive the best quality care.