Bromley Healthcare Care at Home is run by Bromley Healthcare, a local not for profit Community Health provider. Bromley Healthcare is a social enterprise and community interest company with expertise in Nursing, Therapies and other specialist services.
In August 2021, Bromley Healthcare acquired the Link Care Nursing Agency which provided domiciliary care services under existing contracts in Bexley and Bromley including some reablement services. We now have the care agency embedded into our organisational processes and we will continue to work closely across the care and healthcare elements to improve services for our service users.
Here are some examples of how we give back to the local communities we work in:
Working with local partners
We quickly created a collaboration with London South East Colleges (LSEC) to deliver the ‘Prepare to Care’ programme. This is an 8 week course preparing those wanting to work as a care professional. The programme is designed to open doors to a career within health and social care and shine a spotlight on the variety of roles available, ranging from healthcare support workers to care professionals. Participants will be equipped with the key skills and knowledge needed to work in the sector. They will also gain an essential entry level qualification in health and social care.
Training and Education
In line with our organisational objective, we have a key focus on ‘growing our own’ team. As a core strand of this initiative, we run multiple apprenticeship programmes across all of our services clinically, operationally and in administrative roles. Across Bromley Healthcare, we currently have 55 apprentices and 27 apprentices in the pipeline with an average of a 2-year course which equate to around 107,250 hours per annum. Going forward, we would be looking at around 160,000 hours of apprenticeship time per annum.
Health and Wellbeing
Most of our staff who work for our Bexley services are Bexley residents. We have advanced our health and wellbeing offer for staff drastically throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in order to better support staff. By creating this micro-environment within the boroughs, we want to act as a leader to improve the jobs and career opportunities for local staff. There is a competitive element to this to try to attract and retain talent across the boroughs and particularly in Bexley, we will be competing with the likes of local supermarkets and online shopping warehouses and deliveries for staff.
Some of the staff incentives within domiciliary care include flexible working, access to mental health support services, cycle to work scheme, yearly retention vouchers, free financial advice, loans for travelcards, employee of the month awards, free staff physiotherapy and discounted gym membership. We have also set up Equality and Inclusion and LGBTQ+ networks within the organisation to ensure that we are meeting the expectations of staff and that equality is valued across the organisation and our projects.
We review our health and wellbeing offer on a regular basis, so we have a yearly baseline of the offering across staff from which we can improve upon.
