Cross-functional training: every care home role counts
Care homes are discovering that resident safety and dignity depend on more than clinical training reaching the right people. Abuka, a cross-functional training specialist, the Gold Standards Framework (GSF) end-of-life care programme, and the National Dementia Care Accreditation Scheme (NaDCAS) explain why kitchen, housekeeping, maintenance and activities teams need the same awareness as nurses and carers, and how to make sure that training is good enough to matter.
Care home teams are rarely short of people committed to residents' wellbeing, yet the way that commitment is organised can still leave gaps. Training tends to follow job titles rather than the resident's actual day, so a nurse learns what a nurse needs to know, a chef learns what a chef needs to know, and the space between those two worlds is left largely unaddressed. Residents do not experience the home department by department. They experience whoever happens to be in the room, and that person's ability to notice when something is wrong rarely depends on what is printed on their name badge.
Seeing yourself in the resident's safety net
What changes when non-clinical staff receive training in moving and handling or recognising deterioration is not simply what they know, but how they see their own role. Abuka describes the shift as moving from "I'm here to complete a task" to "I'm part of the resident's safety net". Staff keep their core duties, but become far more alert to the person in front of them.
The examples are often small but significant: a domestic might notice someone becoming breathless on the way to the bathroom, a kitchen assistant might spot a resident quietly leaving food that requires chewing, and a laundry assistant might pick up on a change in continence. None of these observations requires a clinical qualification, only the confidence to know they matter and how to raise them. Done well, cross-departmental training promotes shared ownership of issues such as safeguarding, falls prevention, hydration and deterioration, rather than leaving them as the sole responsibility of nurses or carers.
Overcoming "not my job"
The biggest barrier to buy-in, according to Abuka, is rarely a lack of care. It is role identity: staff viewing training through the lens of their job title rather than the resident's experience. Progress comes when managers make clear that cross-functional training is not about adding clinical responsibility to non-clinical roles, but about giving staff the confidence to notice, respond and escalate appropriately.
One Experiencing Dementia course, run for a mixed group of carers, domestics and kitchen staff, illustrates how quickly that resistance can shift. The non-care staff arrived with a distinct "them and us" attitude, unsure why they had been included. By the end of the day, comments had moved from scepticism to recognition: "So that's why Mr X has a different coloured plate," and "I could never understand why Mrs Y always thinks I'm her daughter, but I do now."
That shift shows up in real incidents too. At one home where every member of staff had completed Emergency First Aid at Work training, it was the maintenance man, not the carers busy handing out breakfast, who spotted a resident choking and began back slaps to clear the blockage. At another, where staff had received joint dementia and dysphagia training, a domestic intercepted a visitor handing out boiled sweets in the lounge, recognising that a resident with both conditions might not refuse the sweet or understand its danger.
Where the gap becomes visible
The consequences of not extending this understanding are equally instructive in end-of-life care. GSF programmes rely on Champions who carry awareness beyond nursing and care teams into catering, housekeeping, activities and maintenance. When that awareness stays confined to the clinical team, the disconnect shows up in small but distressing ways. A housekeeper may continue their usual routine, unintentionally disturbing a resident or their family, or an activities coordinator may miss an opportunity for meaningful one-to-one time, simply because they were not aware a resident's needs had changed. Families notice these gaps, and distress can follow even where everyone involved meant well. The GSF approach does not require every member of staff to become an end-of-life specialist, only the confidence to notice a changing need and know when to escalate it.
Making sure the training is actually good
Cross-functional training only closes gaps if it is genuinely good, and that is where NaDCAS comes in. The National Dementia Care Accreditation Scheme has built a Practice Development Guild, a vetted network of training providers committed to improving dementia care. Each member undergoes a NaDCAS screening and quality review before joining, giving care homes assurance about the quality, relevance and credibility of the training on offer.
The Guild selects members because their work aligns with NaDCAS' Nine Foundations for Exceptional Dementia Care, connecting individual sessions to a wider framework for practice development. It gives homes a clearer route to specialist expertise, and greater confidence that external training is relevant and consistent with the principles behind good dementia care, rather than simply another course in a crowded market.
Training that changes practice, not just policy
Good cross-functional training isn't about putting everyone in the same room and delivering the same slides. It works best when sessions are practical and scenario-based, built around situations such as a resident not eating as usual or struggling to stand, so each department can talk through what they might notice and who they should tell. The strongest sessions bring care staff, nurses, kitchen, housekeeping, laundry, activities and maintenance into the room together, with managers attending too, since they set the culture around shared responsibility.
Compassion has never been the preserve of any single department. Understanding, communication, confidence, and credible training turn that compassion into consistent care, and building them across the whole home remains one of the more overlooked opportunities in workforce development.
How Care Homes Can Deliver Gold Standard End-of-Life Care
Care homes are increasingly delivering end-of-life care to the same standard as hospitals and hospices. The Gold Standards Framework explains how structured training is helping teams reach that standard.
There is a persistent assumption that end-of-life care belongs in hospitals or hospices, and that care homes are a lesser setting for it, an assumption which is wholly inaccurate. With the right education and support, care homes can offer residents the chance to live well, plan ahead and receive high-quality care in the place they already call home.
The Gold Standards Framework (GSF) training programme has been built around that principle. It gives care teams the knowledge, skills and confidence to deliver excellent end-of-life care, using a whole-home approach that helps staff recognise changing needs earlier, hold meaningful conversations and work together around each resident's wishes.
Homes that have completed the training describe its effect as transformational; one reported that GSF had "created a completely different culture and approach to living well and dying well", with staff more confident in spotting needs early and acting on them.
From reactive to proactive
The training's central aim is shifting care homes from a reactive to a proactive approach. As staff grow more confident having sensitive conversations, they are better placed to understand what matters most to residents, support advance care planning and bring families and wider care teams into decisions, keeping care person-centred throughout.
The route to accreditation begins with six months of training delivered by GSF's clinical team, all of whom have current or previous experience working in care homes. Once training is complete, organisations embed the framework into everyday practice before progressing to accreditation, which involves building a portfolio and undergoing an assessment visit.
The long-term benefits reported by accredited homes include improved resident care, stronger communication, greater staff confidence, better teamwork and more residents supported to remain in their preferred place of care. As one home put it: "You only have one chance to get it right, and GSF means that everyone is aware of what is going on and how to manage each situation."
Families feel the impact as strongly as staff; one relative described how the framework had "taken the fear away" and allowed her to be her mother's daughter again, rather than her carer, at the end of her mother's life.
For care home leaders, GSF training is best understood not as an added pressure b
ut as an investment in existing good practice, one that builds a whole-home culture where everyone has a role in delivering compassionate, consistent, personalised care.
CQC Returning to Good: Making Quality Visible Every Day
As CQC scrutiny turns to services that have long held a Good rating, Quality Compliance Systems (QCS) explains why evidencing quality now depends on everyday practice, not paperwork produced for inspection.
As the Care Quality Commission turns its attention to services that have held a Good rating for several years, care providers face a subtly different challenge: showing that quality is lived day to day, not simply preserved for the next inspection.
The regulator's Returning to Good programme focuses on adult social care services likely to maintain a Good rating. Rather than testing this through a single snapshot, inspectors are placing greater weight on people's experiences and outcomes, drawing on observation, conversations with staff and leaders, and proportionate checks of records.
For managers, this shifts the emphasis away from gathering paperwork at short notice and towards building a culture in which good care is visible in ordinary daily routines. According to QCS, providers should review performance against the five CQC key questions and relevant quality statements, keep policies, audits, risk assessments, training records and feedback current, and ensure leaders can demonstrate how they listen to residents and act on what they learn.
The most resilient services, QCS argues, are those where evidence sits naturally within care planning conversations, handovers, team meetings and quality improvement activity, rather than being assembled retrospectively. When staff understand the reasoning behind their guidance, and when feedback from residents, relatives, colleagues and visiting professionals is genuinely acted upon, good care becomes easier to demonstrate and sustain over time.
This is where digital compliance support can play a practical role. QCS's platform connects compliance, quality improvement, workforce support, and AI-powered guidance in one place, helping providers keep pace with regulatory change without losing sight of resident outcomes. Its mock inspection tool allows services to test readiness and identify gaps before an assessment. At the same time, its feedback survey system, developed with a former CQC inspector, helps providers collect and evidence how input from residents and staff translates into action.
The company has also introduced Lyra, an AI tool designed to give staff instant, policy-backed answers rather than requiring them to search through lengthy documents or wait for support. QCS says the aim is to support staff judgement rather than replace it, giving teams confidence to act while keeping professional decision-making at the centre of care.
Whatever stage a service is at, whether maintaining an existing Good rating, working towards Outstanding, or rebuilding confidence after a difficult period, the principle QCS sets out is consistent: quality demonstrated only for inspectors is quality that is difficult to sustain. Building the habits and records that make good care visible every day is what keeps a service genuinely ready for assessment, whenever it comes.
NaDCAS Practice Development Guild Connects Care Homes with Vetted Dementia Trainers
NaDCAS, the National Dementia Care Accreditation Scheme, has launched a Practice Development Guild connecting care providers with vetted specialist trainers, helping services turn dementia care ambitions into demonstrable, accredited practice.
The National Dementia Care Accreditation Scheme (NaDCAS) helps providers develop, demonstrate, and sustain exceptional dementia care. Its frameworks, built with research universities, sector specialists and people with lived experience of dementia, give services a practical structure for improvement, from an initial assessment of current practice through to formal accreditation as a recognised specialist dementia care provider.
A crowded market, simplified
Even strong training can lose impact if it does not connect to a home's wider development goals, and the dementia care training market is a difficult one to navigate, with providers of varying approaches, depth and credibility competing for attention. NaDCAS has responded with its Practice Development Guild, a curated network of training and practice development organisations that share its commitment to raising dementia care standards. Each member is screened and reviewed by NaDCAS before joining, giving care providers a level of assurance that would otherwise take considerable time to establish independently.
Linking training to the bigger picture
What distinguishes the Guild from a simple supplier directory is its grounding in NaDCAS' Nine Foundations for Exceptional Dementia Care, a framework spanning areas such as person-centred participation and leadership and culture. Guild members are selected because their expertise maps onto these foundations, giving providers a clearer route to specialist input that complements, rather than duplicates, their existing development priorities.
This structure is designed to serve providers at any stage of their journey, whether they are identifying gaps through self-assessment, acting on the findings of a practice review, or working towards full NaDCAS accreditation. Guild members can be brought in to address specific priorities as they emerge, and the network's breadth means providers are encouraged to think beyond one-off training sessions towards sustained team development and everyday practice change.
A shared standard
The Guild's underlying premise is straightforward: better dementia care depends on better understanding, well-supported teams and a genuine willingness among providers to keep learning. By vetting training partners against a consistent set of standards, NaDCAS aims to remove some of the guesswork, helping care homes invest with confidence that the support they commission is credible and relevant to dementia care.
For care providers weighing up their next steps in dementia care development, the Guild offers a starting point grounded in independent scrutiny rather than marketing claims alone.
To find out more, contact Claire Reading, Director of Partnerships and Operations, at claire.reading@nadcas.org, or visit www.nadcas.org.
Care worker Tom Rose wins Care Sector’s Got Talent 2026
A 23-year-old care worker from Avery Elstree View in Borehamwood has won the £5,000 top prize at Care Sector’s Got Talent 2026, after playing Prince’s Purple Rain on the piano without being able to see the keys.
Talent in social care often goes unseen outside the home where people work. Colleagues may know who sings in the lounge or plays the piano at a residents’ party, but the wider sector rarely sees it, and the people involved seldom get a stage of their own. Care Sector’s Got Talent was created to change that. This year’s winner shows what can happen when a team decides one of its own deserves to be heard.
Tom Rose, a care worker at Avery Elstree View in Borehamwood, was named winner of Care Sector’s Got Talent 2026 at the Grand Final. The final took place at Care Show Birmingham at the NEC on Wednesday 7 October. Playing Purple Rain blindfolded, Tom beat seven other finalists in front of an audience of 500 care sector colleagues, friends and supporters. The line-up included a stand-up comedian, a saxophonist, a three-piece blues band, a care home choir and a learning disability performing arts group.
Rapper Reward Jachiang Mangbon, from Ashbrook Court in Waltham Abbey, won the audience vote. His prize is a £1,000 talent development fund, which he can put towards lessons, coaching or equipment.
Why Care Sector’s Got Talent matters to the sector
The competition is run by Championing Social Care, the organisation behind sector-wide initiatives including Care Home Open Week. It was set up to celebrate the talent, creativity, resilience and professionalism of people who work in and draw on social care. It also aims to give them the kind of national platform more often reserved for other sectors.
Organisers say 2026 has been the competition’s biggest year so far, with a record number of entries, a larger live audience and more media interest. The growth in audience is clear. Last year’s Grand Final at Birmingham Rep played to around 200 people, and was won by saxophonist Oladayo Ojekanmi of 365 Support in Liverpool.
A blindfold, a dare and a reluctant entrant
Tom has played the piano since he was six, but he was not keen to enter. Colleagues at Elstree View persuaded him to submit an audition, and he decided he needed something memorable to stand out. A friend joked that he could probably play Purple Rain without looking at the keys, so Tom went a step further and played it blindfolded, relying on muscle memory. He had never tried it before and was not sure he could pull it off.
Being unable to see the audience did nothing for his nerves. “No, no, my nerves were 20,000 times worse!” he laughed.
The result took a moment to sink in. “I kept thinking, did I hear him say it right? The microphone was buzzing, and I really couldn’t process it. I just felt insane amounts of excitement.”
For Tom, the final was a personal test as much as a performance. “I think this was a really good test of my confidence. I have played in front of people before, but never a crowd this big and never blindfolded. This was an opportunity for me to really try and show myself that I could do it.”
Judge and social care influencer Bailey Greetham-Clark said on the night: “Tonight was a talent show, and Tom truly displayed an incredible talent to play the piano with a blindfold. It was just insane. I’d love to see how well he could play without the blindfold! It was magnificent. He truly deserved the win.”
The team behind the win
Tom is clear that he would not have been on stage without his colleagues, and he thanked his manager, Rosie Scott, in particular. “They’re the reason I’m in it in the first place. The amount of people that kept begging me to submit an audition. I was the one who was reluctant at first. Their support has just been absolutely amazing.”
The other finalists’ stories, and the support behind them, also stayed with him. Some residents had travelled to Birmingham to watch their care home teams perform. “The atmosphere was amazing,” he said. “The audience was so invested in every single act. Even just behind the scenes, I could hear them whoop and cheer and clap and everything.”
Tom has not yet decided what to do with the £5,000, admitting he has “no idea where to start”. He does know he wants to keep playing. “I’d love to play [for] some more people. I think that’s something I’m really passionate about. I’d love to play in a pub or an event or a gig, whatever it is.”
“I think just playing music to people is one of the best things ever, and it just makes everyone happier.” Tom Rose
Asked to sum up the experience in a single word, Tom chose “glorious”.
What care providers can take from Care Sector’s Got Talent
Tom’s win began with colleagues who noticed his talent and kept encouraging him. That is the lesson other providers can use: recognition does not have to start with a national final. Internal talent showcases, awards and recognition schemes let staff and residents bring more of themselves to work and home, and they can strengthen morale and pride across a team.
Providers who want to try this can download the free NAPA activity pack. It contains 12 ideas for running a Care Sector’s Got Talent-style event in the home. Watching the Grand Final together is also an easy group activity. Residents and staff can cheer on colleagues from across the sector, and it may encourage a few entrants for next year.
How to watch the Care Sector’s Got Talent 2026 Grand Final
The full Grand Final is available on the Care Sector’s Got Talent YouTube channel from 2.30pm on Friday 9 October. The Championing Social Care website has details of the competition, previous highlights and how to take part next year.
Essential 5: Building a Care Home Induction That Lasts
The first weeks in a new role shape whether care staff feel confident, supported and inclined to stay. We set out five priorities that help care home managers build induction programmes which go beyond compliance and prepare new starters for the realities of the role.
- Start with values, not paperwork
Before policies and procedures, new starters need to understand what the home stands for and how that looks in everyday practice. Opening inductions with the organisation's values, alongside introductions to residents and colleagues, gives context to everything that follows. When staff grasp why the home works as it does, mandatory training feels like preparation for meaningful work rather than a series of boxes to tick. - Make the Care Certificate count
The Care Certificate remains the benchmark for new care workers in England, but its value depends on how it is delivered. Carry out assessments in practice wherever possible, observing new starters as they support residents rather than relying on workbooks alone. Pairing each standard with real examples from the home helps staff connect theory to the people they care for. - Give shadowing a structure
Shadowing experienced colleagues is one of the most effective ways to build confidence, provided it has structure. New starters benefit from working alongside a consistent, trained mentor across shifts, gradually taking on tasks under supervision until competence is observed and signed off. Rushing this stage to cover rota gaps may ease short-term pressure, but it often leaves staff anxious and more likely to leave early. - Build confidence to speak up
Knowing safeguarding theory is not the same as feeling able to raise a concern. Induction should make reporting routes explicit, name the people new starters can approach, and reassure them that speaking up is expected and supported. Scenario-based discussion, using situations staff are likely to encounter, helps them recognise subtle warning signs and builds an open culture from their very first week. - Review, reflect and plan ahead
Induction should not end abruptly once mandatory modules are complete. Regular supervision during probation gives new starters space to reflect, ask questions and flag where they need further support, while giving managers an early view of emerging strengths. Agreeing a development plan at the end of this period signals that the home is invested in their progress, which can make a real difference to retention.
Stories of Care: Prash Patel, From Specsavers to Nurse Next Door
Prash Patel spent fifteen years building Specsavers into a household name before turning his talent for spotting problems on the UK's home care sector. Discover how a career built on innovation, not vocation, led him to Nurse Next Door.
Not everyone who ends up in social care arrives through a sense of calling. For Prash Patel, it began with a problem he couldn't walk past.
Long before he had anything to do with care, Patel was part of the team behind Specsavers in the UK, working alongside his wife to build the brand from the ground up. Together they set new standards in service, customer experience and innovation, contributing to campaigns as recognisable as "Should've gone to Specsavers" and helping the business become first to market in hearing services and digital signage. Their work earned awards and industry recognition for doing things differently, and doing them well.
After fifteen years in retail optical and hearing services, the pair felt the pull of a new challenge. They didn't turn to care because of a lifelong ambition to work in the sector. They came because they recognised a system that was missing something, and believed they had the skills to fix it.
"Sometimes you don't find a calling, you create one"
Seeing opportunity where others see chaos
Patel and his wife identified a shortage of quality home care across the UK and drew on their experience building trust in health and retail services to launch their first home care business, Care More. From there, they moved into franchise growth with Kare Plus, before joining Nurse Next Door, the Canadian home care brand known for its Happier Ageing philosophy, an approach built around supporting independence, joy and dignity in later life.
For Patel, the move made sense. It gave him the chance to bring an entrepreneurial mindset to a sector he felt was crying out for innovation and genuine human connection, rather than simply more capacity.
Pride in impact
Among the moments Patel is proudest of is being asked to contribute to the UK Parliamentary review into social care in 2020. For him, the invitation validated that his work was influencing more than individual clients or local franchises; it was helping shape thinking at a national level.
But it's the smaller, personal stories that keep him motivated day to day. One message from a family captures what he says his teams strive for: "At Christmas 2024, my Dad was in A&E suffering from dehydration. By early 2025, Nurse Next Door created a bespoke, flexible care package. Dad was able to watch his favourite football team win a play-off match at Wembley in May. This would not have been possible without their care. Simply put, Dad would not be able to live independently without their support, to the obvious benefit for him and the wider family."
For Patel, moments like this aren't the exception. They're what he considers the real measure of the work.
Creating culture and joy
Patel firmly believes that celebrating wins, however small, matters. Every week, his team gathers virtually for a seven-minute huddle to share good news from across every department: the big achievements, the smaller victories, and, by his own admission, the occasional corny joke to lighten the mood.
"Celebrating together keeps us grounded," he says. "It reminds us why we do what we do."
What makes great care
Ask Patel what separates good care from great care, and he's clear: it comes from genuinely wanting to make a difference, something he believes can't be manufactured. He focuses on ensuring his teams are trained, supported, and given the confidence to lead with kindness, empathy, and consistency, arguing that the return on that investment speaks for itself: carers who are engaged, customers who thrive, and a culture that sustains itself without needing to be forced.
He's not naive about the pressures facing the sector. Patel points to providers cutting corners, mounting cost pressures from local authorities, and operators he considers unscrupulous. Even so, he remains firm that integrity, service and heart aren't optional extras in care. In his view, they're the whole point.
Inspiring the next generation
When asked whether a career in care is worth pursuing, he won't hesitate.
"It's not just rewarding, it's transformative," he says. "There's room to grow, to lead, to innovate and to make lives better every single day."
He points to examples within the Nurse Next Door network of carers who progressed to become branch owners, people whose ambitions expanded once someone recognised their potential. That belief in people, and the willingness to see potential others might overlook, sits at the centre of his leadership approach.
"Sometimes all it takes is someone to believe in you," he adds.
A life dedicated to better care
Patel's story reminds us that talent in social care doesn't always come from lifelong devotion to the sector. Sometimes it comes from spotting a gap, having the confidence to fill it, and bringing everything learned across business, retail and life into a single purpose.
Through problem-solving, ambition, and sustained commitment, Patel has helped improve the lives of thousands of customers, families, carers, and communities. It's a career that illustrates, in practical terms, what strong leadership can look like when applied to care.
Care Home of the Month: The Burlington, Shepperton
A culture built on people
Ask what makes a care home stand out and most operators will point to policies or a well-designed activities programme. At The Burlington in Shepperton, part of Boutique Care Homes, the answer lies somewhere less measurable: a culture residents and families describe as family, built not through a single initiative but through the cumulative effect of how the whole team works together. Three people in particular give that culture its shape: Home Manager Margielyn, known to everyone as Margie, Admissions Manager Kirsty, and Sarah, Head of Lifestyle and Wellbeing.
Margie leads through warmth rather than hierarchy, an approach recognised beyond the home itself when she won the Eminent Woman of Impact Award at the Women's Community Impact Awards in March 2026, held for International Women's Day. The award reflected work she does alongside her role at The Burlington, including a seat on the Executive Board of Women's Voice and the presidency of the Aklanon Community UK & Ireland. "We create spaces where people feel valued and where their voices matter. That's what drives me," she said on accepting the award, a description that applies as much to how she runs the home as to the honour itself.
Kirsty is often the first familiar voice a family hears, and she sees the role as one of staying power rather than a single conversation. "Families don't just need information, they need someone who'll still be there for the questions that come up months later," she says. Sarah, meanwhile, designs and runs the activity and engagement calendar that turns the building from a place people live into a place people do things. Together, and with the wider team around them, they translate what could easily be a slogan into something residents and families experience daily.
Hospitality as part of the care offer
That philosophy extends into how The Burlington is designed to be used. The home's Piano Bar and private dining room are not peripheral extras but a deliberate part of the care offer, built on the view that a home is judged as much on whether people want to spend time there as on the standard of care delivered. Coffee Connections, a regular community gathering, reinforces this, giving residents, families and local visitors a reason to be in the building on an ordinary day rather than only during a scheduled visit. Families have told the team it changes the character of a visit entirely, less an appointment, more the feeling of dropping in.
Recognition built over years, not months
The Burlington's recognition has accumulated steadily rather than arriving all at once. The home won Care Home of the Year at the Surrey Care Awards in 2022, the NAPA Physical Activity Award in 2024, and Champion of People and Progress at the Surrey Care Awards in 2025. This year it was named a Top 20 UK South East Care Home, and it has held a 10 out of 10 rating on carehome.co.uk for close to three years, a sustained mark rather than a single high point. Boutique Care Homes, the wider group The Burlington belongs to, has its own record to match, having won Care Home Group of the Year (Small) at the National Care Awards in both 2023 and 2025.
That reputation is backed by consistency behind the scenes too: occupancy above 95%, staff retention at 98%, and no reliance on agency cover, figures that have held steady for several years rather than spiking around award season.
Rooted in Shepperton
The Burlington's connection to its local community runs through several distinct relationships rather than one dominant partnership. In August, 862 Sunbury Squadron Royal Air Force Air Cadets visited the home, arriving with a musical parade before spending the afternoon with residents, sharing stories and photographs. Earlier in the summer, residents took a trip to the local pub, The Red Lion, for an afternoon of cocktails, nibbles, cards and friendly competition, part of the home's Life Enrichment Programme, which treats getting out into the town as its own form of confidence-building. Residents have also spent an afternoon at Squires Garden Centre in Shepperton, browsing over tea and cake and swapping memories of gardens they once grew themselves. A uniformed youth organisation, a local pub, a garden centre: taken together, these everyday touchpoints keep life at The Burlington from stopping at the front door, for residents and for the wider community coming in.
The moment that captures it
One afternoon in particular illustrates what that openness produces. The Burlington's Farm Experience Day in August, run with long-standing partner Browells Wood Pet Therapy, was deliberately timed to coincide with the school summer holidays, so that local children could take part alongside residents. The aim was simple: put a generation with time on its hands in a room with a generation full of stories to tell.
As a group of residents gathered around a pen of lambs, children visiting with their grandparents crouched down to stroke them. It could have stayed a pleasant, unremarkable scene, had it not been for one exchange. A resident who rarely leaves her room unprompted spent twenty minutes narrating childhood farm memories to a six-year-old who had not stopped asking her questions since he arrived. Nobody scripted the conversation or assigned them to each other. It happened because the day had been built to give it room to.
Residents at the centre of it all were cheerfully commenting on the lambs, the children and everything else within earshot. It is the kind of afternoon that is difficult to plan for on paper but easy to recognise in person: two organisations who trust each other, a purpose behind the timing, and a resident and a six-year-old who needed no introduction to find something to talk about.
Time Well Spent
In this Q&A, Evondos explains how its automated dispenser, Nora, is designed to reduce dispensing errors, ease the pressure of staff medication rounds and give residents more independence over their routine.
What does Nora do?
The Evondos Nora is a CE-marked automated medication dispenser designed for people who may need support with their medication schedule. A pharmacy dispenses each resident's prescription into sealed pouches, printed with their name and dose time, then joins them into a roll that is loaded into the device. At the scheduled time, the button and clock ring change colour and an audible signal sounds; one press releases the pouch. If a dose is missed, the button turns red and the pouch can still be taken, while care teams are notified when a dose is missed or there is an error on the machine. Support is available around the clock.
Who is it designed for?
Nora suits care homes, nursing homes, extra care and supported living settings, particularly residents taking several medicines a day, those living with cognitive impairment, or anyone for whom physical handling is the barrier, such as arthritis, tremor or reduced grip. Because a carer is present, it also works for residents who could not manage a dispenser independently; the device handles timing and preparation, while staff provide the prompting and reassurance only a person can.
How does it reduce the risk of dispensing errors?
Mostly by removing steps. A traditional round involves handling loose tablets and blister packs, reading charts and working at speed, often for many residents in a short window, and each of those steps is a point where something can go differently than intended. With Nora, the pharmacy dispenses and checks medication into sealed, named pouches, and the device releases only the pouch that is due, when it is due. It does not remove human judgement from the process, and is not meant to; it removes the repetitive handling that judgement has to compete with.
What has changed for providers already using it?
Kyndi, a local authority trading company owned by Medway Council, has around 100 dispensers in use across Medway and the South East. One 81-year-old resident had been receiving four fifteen-minute medication-only calls a day; because those visits existed solely to hand over medication, they were removed entirely, freeing an hour of care time daily. For an 83-year-old resident receiving four hour-long visits combining personal care and medication, separating the two reduced her package from four visits a day to two.
Why should a care home consider it?
Because it gives everyone time back. Residents can take medication around their own day rather than waiting in for it. For the organisation, preparation happens at the pharmacy, so refills become periodic rather than a daily task. For staff, each scheduled time prompts the resident directly, so nobody is racing the clock to reach everyone within the same window. The mechanical part of the round takes less time in the morning, leaving more time for the parts that need a person.
Detecting earlier: A route to early Alzheimer's diagnosis
Dr Emer MacSweeney, CEO and Medical Director at Re:Cognition Health, discusses the new diagnostic pathway and prevention trials now reshaping how early Alzheimer's disease can be caught and treated.
For decades, an Alzheimer's diagnosis has arrived too late to change much. By the time memory loss is obvious, the disease has often been active in the brain for twenty years, and significant, irreversible damage has already occurred. Re:Cognition Health's latest work aims squarely to close that gap, and the tools now exist to do it.
A structured route to diagnosis
The organisation has launched CognitionCheck, a diagnostic pathway that moves patients from initial concern to a specialist answer in four stages: an AI-driven cognitive assessment to establish a baseline, a P-tau217 blood test, a detailed MRI brain scan, and a consultation with an expert cognitive clinician. Each element builds on the last, rather than leaving patients with an isolated result and no context.
The blood test is central to that shift. P-tau217 is a phosphorylated tau protein strongly associated with Alzheimer's pathology, and elevated levels are highly predictive of the abnormal amyloid build-up seen in the brains of people with the disease, often long before symptoms are noticeable. This level of accuracy from a simple blood draw brings a form of testing once reliant on expensive PET imaging or invasive lumbar punctures within much easier reach.
Testing the case for prevention
That earlier window is also being tested directly.
Re:Cognition Health is currently enrolling participants for the PrevenTRON clinical trial in the UK and USA. The study is for individuals who are cognitively healthy but have been found through testing to have abnormally elevated amyloid protein in the brain. The trial aims to determine whether Trontinemab, a monoclonal antibody designed to remove toxic amyloid protein from the brain before symptoms begin, can prevent or significantly delay the onset of Alzheimer’s symptoms.
Another completed prevention study is the TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 3 clinical trial, which investigated Kisunla in cognitively normal individuals with high brain amyloid protein and was designed to answer the same question as the PrevenTRON study. If these studies are successful, they will mark a genuine shift in Alzheimer's care, from treating disease once symptoms are established, to intervening with treatment before the onset of any symptoms.
Working towards a cure
Dr MacSweeney sees CognitionCheck, TRAILBLAZER-ALZ 3 and PrevenTRON as part of a longer journey towards earlier Alzheimer’s detection and intervention. She argues that research must look beyond amyloid to inflammation, vascular health, genetics and tau, alongside combination therapies similar to those used in cancer and cardiovascular medicine. She believes dementia should be recognised as a defining healthcare challenge, supported by a coordinated UK strategy that invests in biomarkers, imaging, workforce training, and memory-clinic infrastructure. Access must also be equitable, with eligible patients identified earlier and faster. Ultimately, cognitive change should prompt the same instinct to seek medical advice as changes in eyesight or heart health: something to be checked promptly, not written off as an inevitable part of ageing.
To discuss referrals or clinical education sessions, contact:
referrals@re-cognitionhealth.com or visit recognitionhealth.com