Impact Report 2024

A word from our Head of Operations

It is with great pride that I introduce Ascot Care’s first ever Impact Report, a reflection of our commitment to delivering exceptional care, supporting our communities, and investing in the future of our organisation.

2024 has been a year of growth and progress. With seven care homes, a specialist complex behaviours suite, and our home care and recruitment services, we have continued to provide outstanding support to hundreds of individuals across the North East.

To ensure we remain at the forefront of quality care, we have expanded our Head Office team, strengthening key areas such as training, digital transformation, communications, and compliance, and allowing us to enhance the experience of our residents, their families, and our dedicated staff.

Beyond the walls of our care homes, we have taken significant steps to positively impact the wider community. Our new Community Engagement Strategy has driven initiatives that promote mental wellbeing, encourage healthy living, and create opportunities for local businesses and job seekers. Through meaningful partnerships and sponsorships, we are reinforcing our commitment to social responsibility while raising awareness of the challenges our sector faces.

Our dedication to innovation remains strong, and this year we were proud to support the development and implementation of new care-enabling technology across our homes. By embracing advancements that improve resident wellbeing and staff efficiency, we continue to evolve in an ever-changing care landscape.

Equally important is our ongoing support for veterans and military families. This year, we celebrated Langley House becoming the first care home in the North East to be accredited under the Veteran Friendly Framework, and we successfully renewed our ERS Gold Award, reaffirming our pledge to those who have served.

As we look ahead to 2025, we are excited to build on these achievements. With plans to expand our care provision, invest further in our people and technology, and deepen our engagement with local communities, we are poised to make an even greater impact.

I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to our incredible staff, whose dedication and compassion are the foundation of everything we do. To our residents and their families, thank you for entrusting us with your care. And to our partners, supporters, and wider community, we appreciate your continued collaboration as we strive to make a difference.

Together, we will continue to provide high quality care to our residents and create lasting positive change in our communities.

Michelle Lovelace
Head of Operations

In 2024 we operated seven care homes and a complex behaviour suite, delivering over 300 care placements across the North East.

In addition, we provided home care and care recruitment services to numerous clients in the region, employing over 350 people across our homes, offices, and home care services.

As part of our ongoing commitment to delivering the highest quality care to all our residents, we expanded our Head Office team this year, introducing four new roles:

• Communications: Our Head of Marketing is enhancing communication across the group, by ensuring residents, families, staff, and communities have access to clear, timely information while creating new ways to engage with us.

• Digital Transformation: Our IT Systems Administrator is implementing technology that streamlines data collection and analysis to improve care planning, allowing staff to spend more time with residents.

• Quality: Our Quality and Compliance Manager ensures all care homes meet the latest regulatory requirements and implement best practices, driving continuous improvements in care standards.

• Training: Our Training Manager keeps our staff up to date with mandatory training, research, and best practices, ensuring everyone remains highly qualified to meet the needs of all residents.

These new roles provide essential support across all our homes, ensuring consistency, improving standards, and enhancing satisfaction for both residents and staff.

Although people in the UK are living longer, many face health conditions that affect their independence and wellbeing in later life, which challenges our long-term mission. In 2024, our new Community Engagement Strategy helped us enable others to age better.

At Ascot Care, we are on a mission to support our residents to enjoy the best possible quality of life in their later years, through compassionate, professional, and personalised care.

To uphold this promise, in 2024 we aligned our mission with our commitment to support neighbouring communities, by developing a new Community Engagement Strategy centred around three key priorities:

Promoting mental wellbeing

We worked alongside charities and volunteer groups to combat social isolation and promote mental wellness. This involved taking residents on local outings, hosting community events at our care homes, and referring our neighbours to specialist support where needed.

Encouraging healthy living at all ages

We believe that physical health is fundamental to ageing well and enjoying a long, happy life. We partnered with renowned sports clubs to encourage healthy lifestyles in our community. Through sponsorships and local initiatives, we promoted good habits, such as physical activity and healthy eating amongst the community, and within our own care homes.

Creating positive impact for everyone

Our commitment extends to local businesses and job creation. From sourcing local products and services for our care homes, to employing staff from the nearby communities, we prioritised giving back to those around us and contributing to their growth.

Throughout the year, our care homes, residents, and staff came together to support meaningful causes, raising funds and awareness for charities that make a real difference.

As a group

This year, we raised awareness and funds for our chosen charity, the Bradley Lowery Foundation (BLF), for the third consecutive year, by hosting our annual Charity Golf Day at Close House in Heddon on the Wall.

With the support of seventeen participating teams, we raised a total of £10,392, which BLF are using to provide essential support and resources to children and families affected by cancer, and other serious illnesses.

In support of their campaign to find volunteer tradespeople and keep fundraising for their Super Brad’s Pad project, our Marketing team donated their time to design a BLF ad, which we sponsored to appear in the Scarborough Rugby Club match day programmes for the 2024-25 season.

At our care homes

Langley House has been hosting Veteran Friendly coffee mornings every month since February 2024, to provide a space for veterans living in the community to socialise with residents in a welcoming and warm environment.

They have also organised Macmillan coffee mornings to support people living with cancer, and in October, staff and residents wore pink for a special one, with stalls from local businesses, which was dedicated to raise funds for Breast Cancer Awareness.

In November, they supported the Salvation Army’s Toy Appeal by becoming a drop-off point for toys, gifts, and non-perishable food, which the charity distributed to children and teenagers in the East Durham area over Christmas.

Westoe Grange celebrated National Elf Day by hosting an event to raise funds for the Alzheimer's Society in early December. As part of their efforts, the staff dressed up as elves, and a local singer provided entertainment for the residents and their families.

We believe in the power of sport to inspire healthy lifestyles at every age, and in 2024, we proudly sponsored professional rugby players who share our commitment to well-being, dementia awareness, and charitable giving.

Guy Pepper

During the 2023-24 rugby season, we sponsored Guy Pepper, a young flanker with a promising career ahead, who at the time was playing for Newcastle Falcons. Through this sponsorship, we highlighted the importance of healthy lifestyles at every age. Guy is now playing for Bath and England.

Adam Brocklebank

Newcastle Falcons has recently partnered with the Alzheimer’s Society to support their fundraising efforts and raise awareness of Alzheimer’s disease, through a special charity third kit.

Sharing a commitment to increasing awareness of different types of Dementia, we have renewed our partnership with Newcastle Falcons by sponsoring first-team player Adam Brocklebank for the remainder of the 2024-25 season.

Adam will help us promote our upcoming series of free, public webinars focused on dementia, in a bid to foster a greater understanding of this condition amongst the North East community.

Michael Young

In August 2024, we also announced our sponsorship of Michael Young’s Testimonial Year, which will celebrate the outstanding career of the former Newcastle Falcons’ scrum-half, who also played internationally for England 7s, England Saxons, and at club level for Leicester Tigers, Bath, Gloucester and Toulon.

Together with Michael, we will be raising the profile of sports as an essential part of a healthy lifestyle, and a viable career choice for the younger generations. The events and activities we help organise will raise funds for Michael’s chosen charities; My Name’5 Doddie and the Alan Shearer Foundation.

We aim to contribute to the improvement of the care sector, and continuously seek opportunities to engage with new advances early on.

During the summer, the Springfield Lodge team supported the development of new care-enabling technology by running a small-scale trial of video chat software. The AI-powered technology aims to support care homes in combating isolation.

Management and staff shared their insights and assisted the developers in identifying potential use cases within the care sector. Seven residents helped test the technology by taking turns engaging in short conversations with an AI avatar about some of their favourite topics.

At the end of the interactions, residents provided the developers with invaluable feedback to improve the technology, which is still under development.

We are looking forward to continuing our progress and going from strength to strength by focusing on our mission to support people in enjoying the best possible quality of life in their later years.

Investing in expanding our care provision

Whilst our home care services already cover North Yorkshire, we plan to expand our care home provision into this region by acquiring a facility in the Ripon area.

We are in talks with representatives from local government as we seek their support to expand Princess House and Westoe Grange in order to increase the number of care placements available for residents funded by the Local Authorities covering these homes.

Additionally, we are exploring the renovation of the former site of The Lawns care home, with a view to reopening it as our first venture into the luxury care home market.

We anticipate that our plans will increase our capacity by at least 60 care placements across our existing and new care homes.

Investing in people and technology

Our plans for 2025 include continued investment in our digital transformation, focusing on technology that enables our staff to spend more time caring for our residents.

Our staff are crucial to delivering high-quality care. For this reason, we intend to invest in training and upskilling at all levels.

We will do this through a mix of internal training delivered by our newly appointed Training Manager, outsourced training from trusted providers, and support for staff to attain qualifications that lead to career progression within our group.

We are also introducing new ways to support our staff through personal challenges. In 2025, we have partnered with HSBC, which will provide our staff with on-demand financial wellbeing webinars and personalised financial health checks, completely free of charge.

Investing in our communities

We aim to extend our positive impact to the families and friends of our residents by offering bespoke care training opportunities, free of charge, to help them better support their loved ones.

In 2025, we plan to introduce a new Community Sponsorship scheme to provide small-scale funding for community-led initiatives around our care homes and offices.

By sponsoring these projects, we aim to enhance local engagement with our residents and create a more supportive environment for everyone.