Specialist care home training centre celebrates second anniversary

Leading dementia and nursing care home provider Church Farm Care is celebrating the second anniversary of its specialist training centre in Cotgrave, Nottinghamshire.

The training centre offers a range of training courses covering dementia awareness, first aid, end of life care, diabetes awareness, continence, duty of care, food hygiene and nutrition.

Patrick Atkinson, director of Church Farm Care, said: “As the number of care homes within our group grew and in turn our staff numbers, we knew it was vital to invest in our team and further develop and strengthen our training ethos and approach.

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“There is an array of training courses available at our centre in Cotgrave and we’re hoping to continue to expand the team and the courses available to them over the coming years.”

The training centre, which has education more than 400 carers from external care companies and Church Farm Care, is led by training, learning and development manager Liz Norton.

Liz, who has more than 30 years of experience in elderly and dementia care, said: “We are very lucky to have our very own dedicated training centre at Church Farm Care, as it’s extremely rare for a small care home group to have these facilities available to them.

“Care homes often have to pay expensive external providers for training or take online courses, but we are in the business of caring for other humans and to do this to our best ability requires human connection. Connecting with familiar faces in the training team rather than strangers and computers is a great way of ensuring our staff receive the best possible training.

“As well as staff development, the wellbeing and resilience of the people that work with us is very important, so we have tried to ensure that the training centre is a comfortable space for our staff to not only learn but to create relationships with other members of the team. It’s been a great two years for the centre so far and I look forward to the continued development of our staff and the centre as a whole.”