Preston dementia nurses named Care Team of the Year Award at the National Care Awards 2024

HC-One’s Sabrina Community Team at Meadow Bank Care Home were nominated for the award by Natasha Wilson, Dementia Care Manager for their outstanding standard of care and team ethos.

They were crowned at a glittering ceremony at the Excel in London, having shaken off competition from across the country.

What do they do?

‘Sabrina’, Meadow Bank’s Specialist Dementia Care Community (SDCC), offers an enhanced service by focusing on the welfare and wellbeing of people who are emotionally distressed by their dementia and require specialist care and support.

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. 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.

They have 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 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. They hope their strategy becomes a national model, reshaping dementia care for people with complex needs and easing pressure on NHS and social care services.

“Proud and humbled”

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.”

Peace of mind

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