Norfolk woman sets up charity to improve culture of care

Kate Blake the Founder of The Edith Ellen Foundation

A Norfolk woman has pledged to help change the culture of care in residential homes by setting up a new charity to try and prevent abuse.

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Kate Blake, of Upwell, near Downham Market, has established the Edith Ellen Memorial Foundation, in memory of her mother, to strive to ensure that no other person in care is neglected.

The former nurse, who has been at the front end of care for 30 years, has called on others to join the newly established organisation, which is currently awaiting charity status approval.

Mrs Blake’s mother, Edie, died in an Essex care home in 2009 at the age of 89. She said her mother’s residential care home failed in their duty to protect her and keep her safe and she died without pain relief.

Mrs Blake and co-founder David Sparkes plan to launch the independently-run foundation in Norfolk and then to roll it out to the rest of the country by helping to improve care standards and training for staff.

She wants to see the creation of a national benchmark for measuring and raising standards of care and to prevent abuse and neglect by encouraging all care services and providers to focus always on kindness, respect, dignity and compassion in their work.

She added that the foundation will be run “for the people, by the people” with advisors offering guidance on how providers can improve consistency of care, especially in dementia care.

Mrs Blake said her mother spent her last three years isolated and her residential home put their daily routines before her individual wishes. She added that she did not want others to go through similar experiences.

She said: “The whole focus is on empowering everyone receiving and delivering care, their support systems and their communities, to improve individual care needs, by getting all their voices heard and those needs truly addressed.”

“This is something for Norfolk to take the lead, and to roll out, a new people’s standard across the UK, that will start in care homes, before turning it attentions to all other care sectors, that will delivery support and motivation to change any negative attitudes and cultures, to celebrate all this is good in caring, and to raise the consistency of kindness in good care.”

Mrs Blake said she had been working on establishing the foundation over the last eight months and keen to hear from anyone who wanted to become an advisor to work directly with the people in care, their families and the care providers.

“Once we receive our charity status we will then be in a dominate position to demonstrate that care will be improved through our kindness rating and our problem solving approaches to sharing best practices and raising expectations in the standards of good care. This will establish clear benchmarks for care leading to inspirational, motivational and beneficial impacts on the attitudes and lives of just so many people that receive and also deliver care, and will change the whole face of care now and into the future.”