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Past & Present
The Northam Care Trust is a charity in Bideford formed as Northam Lodge in 1978 set up by local parents. Their primary mission was to support people with learning and physical disabilities in having choice and control in achieving the best possible quality of life. This remains at the heart of what we continue to do today as The Northam Care trust.
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. This is through a range of services which include registered residential care, day opportunities and supported living in and around North Devon.
We believe that we are one of best in North Devon providing the highly skilled and care specialist individualised support. This includes Northam Lodge 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 try to tailor our supported living services to offer a ranges of care and support to maximise people’s choice and independence. In our day opportunities we work to ensure people have meaningful and creative sessions to develop skills, have fun and feel part of a peer group.
We always set out to ensure that we offer safe, responsive, caring, inclusive, integrated and well led services in settings where families, friends, advocates and carers will always find a warm welcome.
Shaping A Better 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 260 staff across its services. 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. This includes a dedicated well-being manager, training support team, HR, IT and experienced managers across all our services.
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.
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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. We have been able to make the grounds disability accessible with sensory areas. We have also built a garden pub through a kind donation, which enabled our guys to have another experience which was especially useful through Covid, but continues to be a popular resource. The other site houses our Rose Hill Community Projects and Outreach Services and our central support team. We work with local communities such as schools to develop gardening projects on the land around Rose Hill site.
In our Supported Living work, we work with housing partners in local communities. We provide the care and support and the housing providers look after the properties and the tenancies. We have supported living houses in Bideford, Westward Ho! Barnstaple, South Molton and more new services planned to be developed in the north Devon area.
We will continue to invest in our residential Lodges to ensure they are offering the best adapted and homely facilities for people with complex needs. We continue to review the service to ensure it meets the CQC ethos and guidance of Right Support, Right Care, Right Culture.