Meeting residents’ social needs important to Newbrook team

Newbrook Nursing Home at 25

Caring for the elderly is not just about meeting their medical needs and looking after their diet and personal care, but also about meeting their social needs, providing entertainment and meeting their various interests, say John Noel and Maria McGivney, the father and daughter team over the Newbrook chain of nursing homes.

That’s why they offer a huge range of activities for the residents. They also have their own bus and run weekly bus tours and outings, and there are ‘activity staff’ who arrange and organise the various activities, diversions and outings for the residents – and in fact, Aidan Lynch of ‘The Blizzards’ fame is employed full-time as a music therapist across the group.

Other activities on offer include bingo, boccia, quizzes, exercise classes, arts, crafts and games, dog therapy, karaoke, flower arranging/potting, an ‘imagination gym’, baking, singalongs, one-to-one and group conversations, dog therapy.

There are also visits by a hairdresser, physiotherapy assessments and podiatrist visits.

Relaxation

When people think of the staff in a nursing home, they tend to think of nurses and care assistants, but in fact there is a huge range of roles across the operation, from kitchen staff, chefs, administration staff to various therapists. That’s how the Newbrook chain has come to have a staffing ratio of almost three staff to every two residents.

“Your nursing hall is only as good as your staff,” says John Noel.

Newbrook was the first nursing home opened by John Noel and the late Sarah Ann McGivney in June 1999.

Expansion happened rapidly enough, and so as well as Newbrook in Mullingar, the McGivney family have Newbrook Lodge – also in Mullingar – and Portiuncula nursing home in Multyfarnham, Our Lady’s Manor in Edgeworthstown, Drumbear Lodge in Monaghan, Cuan Caitriona in Castlebar and St Mary’s in Galway.

“They always had a good relationship with the religious orders,” says Maria of her parents, explaining that the Multyfarnham nursing home is in what was the Franciscan College; the Edgeworthstown premises was formerly in the possession of religious sisters as were Cuan Caitriona and St Mary’s.

The family are unabashed about their commitment to their Catholic faith: it very much guides how the nursing homes are run, although they stress that they cater for and respect people of all different faiths and of no faith.

However, unsurprisingly, faith is of great importance to many of the residents of the nursing homes across the Newbrook chain, most of whom would have grown up in an Ireland in which it was the norm to participate fully in the church.

Catering to the spiritual needs of their Catholic residents, John Noel says that Masses are celebrated at Newbrook at least once if not twice a week and in Edgeworthstown, Mass is celebrated every day.

“It’s very important,” says John Noel. “To elderly people it’s fundamental – although I don’t know if it will be as relevant [to the elderly] in 50 years’ time.”

Faith

Maria also sees faith as important to their work: “It’s relevant to our ethos about looking after people and the dignity of human life, regardless of the ailments people have or regardless of how sick people are. It’s about human dignity and treating everybody with respect and valuing life.”

“We would also have a very good relationship with the Church of Ireland, and in fact all denominations really, we care for all denominations and none. You just do what’s good for the person that comes in, whatever their wishes are,” says John Noel.

Contact with family and friends is important for residents of the homes and a significant evolution over time has been the fact that residents now tend to have their own technology – tablets or smartphones – which enable them to keep more regular contact with their families and other contacts.

The McGivney family are close. Next to Maria in the line is Anne, who is a tissue viability nurse. Anne previously worked as a staff nurse at Newbrook and as nurse manager and now does tissue viability on a consultancy basis. She works with the HSE.

Following in his father’s footsteps, Ivan is a dairy farmer, and thanks to his own history of involvement in farming, John Noel enjoys pitching in and giving a hand on the farm from time to time.

Also following in his father’s footsteps, although in a different direction, is Anthony, who is based in Multyfarnham and who works as a builder, while the youngest in the family is Thomas, who is an apprentice electrician based locally as well.

Plans to expand

The McGivneys are working on plans to expand their capacity even further. An extra 30 bedrooms are planned for the Drumbear Lodge nursing home in Monaghan, and the team are also hoping to add a further 17 bedrooms in Castlebar, while looking too at the possibility of expanding the nursing home in Edgeworthstown by adding 25 more bedrooms.

But, says Maria, it is important to the family that even as they expand in size, that they don’t lose the personal touch and that the Newbrook operation does not become corporate in approach: “I would safely say that the vast majority of the people in each home would know who Daddy is,” she says.

At the same time, it’s clear that both she and her father know their staff and many of the residents very well. They know their family circumstances. They ask after their children.

Another important dimension is that when promotion opportunities arise, they prefer to recruit in-house so that the transition is smooth, and also because it provides an incentive to hard-working staff who see there are pathways to promotion.

To ensure the voices of the residents are heard, the chain has a patient advocate in place for each centre. Patients can highlight their wishes or grievances to the patient advocate who will then bring them to the attention of the management team.

“If there’s a problem, you can do something about it, but if you don’t know about it, you can’t. That’s why we always want the relatives and the residents to tell us if there’s something going wrong, because if you don’t know about it, you can do nothing about it,” says John Noel.

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