Staff

Abbendon EMI Nursing Home is owned and run by Mr and Mrs Gilbert who both work full time in the Dovehaven Care Homes and who both have in excess of twenty years experience in the management of care homes.

Abbendon is managed on a day to day basis by our Matron Val Atherton who is a Registered Nurse with a wealth of experience in dealing with residents with Demntia, she has been at the Abbendon for eleven years. Along with her administration staff, Val has overall responsibility for the co-ordination of the various teams who work in the Nursing Home.

[ Staff ]Quality of care is the single most important aspect of the service our residents receive, this kind of quality can only be achieved with the right staff. At Abbendon we are enormously proud of all our staff and immense effort is put into maintaining the constantly high standards achieved in the home. New faces can often have a disruptive and confusing influence on our community of residents so we make every effort to avoid introducing new staff unnecessarily, but when recruiting new staff we ensure we select individuals with a genuine caring attitude, with experience of caring for older people, and the maturity to deal with the demands of their job. We have a high staff to resident ratio that enables us to provide individually assessed care to each resident.

[ Staff ] Our care team consists of 11 Registered Nurses and 24 Health Care Assistants. All our staff receive extensive training, we are firmly committed to investing in our staff to ensure that they have the attitudes and commitment to care correctly for older people with Dementia. Seventy five percent of our care staff are NVQ Level 2 and 3 trained and Val regularly attends seminars and courses relating to Dementia to add to her already extensive knowledge. Part of our core training is the Alzheimer’s Disease Society Care Workers Course which leads to a formal examination which must be passed before they can become Approved Alzheimer’s Society Care Workers. When you visit us you will notice that many of our staff wear badges demonstrating their success in this course.

Another very important team at Abbendon is the catering staff. We have a full time cook and a part time cook who work alongside support staff in the catering department. The cook is responsible for maintaining the high standards of food and drinks for residents and is also responsible for the highest levels of food safety and hygiene. We have regular reviews of all our menus and welcome and comments and suggestions from residents and their families or friends.

The final team who work at Dovehaven House is the domestic service and maintenance staff who look after all the cleaning, laundry and maintenance of the home.