ABOUT US

 Past & Present

The Northam Care Trust is a charity formed as Northam Lodge in 1978 and our primary mission is to support people with learning and physical disabilities in having choice and control in achieving the best possible quality of life, evidenced by real quality outcomes and supported by our passion for excellence.

We are based in North Devon and have developed person centred support for people with profound and multiple learning and physical disabilities and complex needs, people with autism, people with other learning disabilities and additional needs, older people and people with dementia and people with mental health problems in our service continuum. This continuum includes our Residential Lodges, our seven day week day opportunities and ‘in the community’ support through our Rose Hill Community Projects and Outreach Services, our new Supported Living schemes, our Enabling services and our Domiciliary Care services. Excellent communication, respect, dignity, engagement, support for carers and a set of values and behaviours underpin our work and add value with personalisation at the core.

We believe that we are the only organisation in North Devon and North Cornwall providing the high care specialist individualised support found in our Lodges for people with profound disabilities and complex health needs including end of life care. Our clients have access to specialist health and therapeutic services and we have initiated new technology such as ‘Eye Gaze’ in our work to help people to better communicate their wishes, needs and choices to our committed and well trained staff teams.

We always set out to ensure that we offer responsive, caring, inclusive, integrated and well led services in settings where families, friends, advocates and carers will always find a warm welcome.

Future

The Northam Care Trust aims to maintain, sustain and improve its current provision and this includes offering bespoke support in improved buildings and new environments. The organisation has experienced a modernisation programme during the last three years and now employs circa 250 staff across its service continuum. We encourage people to join us to develop careers in social care and to enjoy the excellent inclusive pay rates and flexible working that we offer. Our direct services are supported by a dynamic central support team.

We are looking to extend our services across North Devon and North Cornwall and to ensure that we also support carers in planned or crisis situations.

We  work with the business communities in looking at all opportunities for support in our charitable endeavours and continue to work closely with Devon County Council on furthering the work we do without taking the focus away from the people we currently support. 

New project work in local communities is part of our strategic planning and we work hard at adding value by attracting grant funding to develop new initiatives and innovations. We believe that we have an exciting future. In support of this we will look after our valued staff and continue to invest in them and will put the people we support at the very heart of everything we do.

The Trust owns two large sites in Bideford and Northam. One housing our three residential Lodges which are integrated into the local community. The other houses our Rose Hill Community Projects and Outreach Services and our central support team some of whom are based in modern portacabin offices as a result of COVID protocols and our expansion. We own land at Rose Hill that is currently used for our therapeutic pony project and horticulture project. These properties owe much to the efforts and commitment of former and current Trustees. We will be looking forward at some point to relocating our central support team to new modern offices in Bideford.

In our Supported Living work, we work with housing partners in local communities. We work with housing investment companies and housing associations. We provide the care and support and the housing providers look after the properties and the tenancies. We have schemes in Bideford, several schemes in Westward Ho!, Appledore, Barnstaple, Combe Martin and more new services planned to open in South Molton, Bideford, Holsworthy and Bude.

We will continue to invest in our residential Lodges in the next five years, work to keep them full as this service has gained importance during COVID but at some point we may need to come up with a revised strategic plan for our provision for people with profound disabilities and complex health needs on smaller sites. This is not an immediate priority as we work closely with our excellent CQC Inspector on forward planning and action planning for our residential and supported living personal care services. We will also be joining the South West Regional Care Home Framework and our Lodges provide a scarce resource in N Devon. In fact, the Lodges, known overall as Northam Lodge, recently won a South West Care Homes Network COVID Achievement Award.

Our Income in the future is expected to major on substantial residential, supported living and domiciliary care income plus the income we receive for providing our day services which are expanding into weekend and evening support. Enabling income will support this. We will also work on furthering our employment services for people with learning disabilities.

We major on excellent staff training and quality assurance with dedicated leads in these functions with both directly represented in our Senior Operational Management Team and will continue and will continue to further enhance them going forward.

WE have great relationships with commissioners and have appeared regularly on ITV, BBC, DWP filming initiatives in respect of our high quality services and social care recruitment. We are an ambassadorial organisation for the Minister for Employment/DWP.