Genuine resident advocacy means more than logging complaints. Krzysztof Zatorski, General Manager at Rose Water Place, part of Barchester Healthcare, shares how the home has built systems that enable residents to actively shape decisions about food, activities, and communal spaces.
Most care homes collect resident feedback. Fewer act on it in ways residents can actually see, and fewer still give residents a genuine role in shaping what happens next. Too often, “resident voice” begins and ends with a complaints procedure: a mechanism for flagging what has gone wrong, rather than a route for residents to influence what happens going forward. The distinction matters, because a home that only listens when something breaks down will always be reacting, never building.
Real advocacy looks different. It means residents raising a preference and seeing it become policy, not just an entry in a log. It means feedback loops that run continuously, not just at the point of an annual survey or a formal review. And it means treating residents as people with ongoing opinions about their own home, rather than as a source of data to be managed.
Building that kind of system requires more than good intentions. It needs structure: defined channels for residents to raise ideas, a clear process for turning those ideas into action, and visible proof that the loop closes. Without all three, feedback tends to either go nowhere or get buried in paperwork nobody outside the office ever sees. The homes that get this right tend to share one trait: they treat residents as ongoing collaborators in how the home runs, not as a stakeholder group to be consulted once a year and otherwise left alone.
Ambassadors, not just advisors
One practical model comes from Rose Water Place, where Resident Ambassadors act as direct liaisons between fellow residents and the management team. Rather than waiting for concerns to surface formally, Ambassadors proactively gather views and ideas across the home, closing the gap between what residents think and what staff actually hear.
“Formal feedback and structured documentation are essential; they give us a clear record of how we are doing and keep us accountable, but they are only half the equation,” says General Manager Krzysztof Zatorski. “The real heart of our home lives in the informal, everyday moments. Listening to our residents, becoming their friends and simply experiencing life side by side.”
That philosophy played out when several residents mentioned, during routine conversations, how much they missed playing and listening to music. The feedback led directly to the purchase of a new piano for the main lounge, a modest change but one that reinforced to residents that their voice carried real weight, not polite acknowledgement.
Structured forums that generate momentum
Ad hoc listening only goes so far without a formal counterpart. At Rose Water Place, a monthly open forum brings together residents and department heads, providing a predictable opportunity for residents to raise issues and for staff to share departmental plans and challenges. The format matters as much as the content: residents know the forum is coming, know who will be in the room, and know their contribution will count.
These sessions illustrate a wider point about advocacy: good systems don’t just capture requests; they let ideas develop. A conversation about adding fresh daffodils to the dining tables for spring evolved into a discussion about seasonal flowers year-round, which in turn led to a housekeeping collaboration that filled communal areas with living potted plants, a project one resident asked the life enrichment coordinator to lead. A similar chain of conversation, prompted by residents wanting a shaded garden corner, resulted in a bench and a sunflower border by the home’s wildlife pond. In each case, staff treated the original comment as a starting point rather than a request to be logged and closed.
Rituals rooted in memory
Advocacy also extends into routine, particularly around food, which residents consistently link to memory and comfort. This is where a genuinely resident-led approach tends to differ from a standard activities calendar: it responds to what residents specifically miss, rather than to what a provider assumes will generally please them.
At Rose Water Place, many residents recalled missing family breakfasts before work or school in earlier life, prompting a Monthly Family Breakfast on the first Thursday of each month, giving families informal access to Zatorski and his department heads outside of scheduled meetings. Food choices are put to residents just as directly. When the kitchen wanted its Friday fish and chips to match residents’ memories of seaside trips, it ran a tasting session with different batter styles and chip cuts and let residents vote. The winning combination is now the home’s standard recipe, chosen by the people eating it rather than decided on their behalf.
Keeping standards honest
Systems like these only work if the loop stays open day-to-day, not just during scheduled meetings. A dedicated Food Comments Book captures real-time impressions, and Zatorski and his department heads regularly join residents for lunch, turning shared meals into informal dining audits.
This sits alongside more formal mechanisms. Tell Barchester Surveys, run annually, provide quantitative and written feedback to track trends over time, while monthly Resident of the Day Checks involve dedicated calls to relatives, giving families a reliable channel to raise updates or concerns outside of a visit. At Rose Water Place, an open-door policy and “You Said, We Did” display boards, which track suggestions alongside the changes made in response, serve the same purpose: showing residents and families that feedback consistently leads to visible action, rather than disappearing into a system with no return.
Advocacy as culture, not compliance
The individual mechanisms are not complicated. What makes them effective, at Rose Water Place and elsewhere, is that formal and informal channels reinforce each other, and that requests are followed through to something residents can actually see. A piano or a survey is easy to introduce; a culture in which residents expect to be heard, and are proved right, takes sustained effort across every level of the home.
For care homes looking to move beyond complaint-handling towards genuine advocacy, the lesson is straightforward: give residents a structured way to be heard, and make sure the outcome of that listening is visible, not just recorded.
