Nursing and residential care case study: Forresters (New Forest)
Forresters is a hotel with a difference.
Located in the beautiful setting of the New Forest, not far from the sea, Forresters offers hotel-style respite care for adults over 18 experiencing severe mental illness. This is respite care like no other in the UK and does more than just give carers a break.
Rethink’s innovative service enables people experiencing severe mental illness to enjoy a hotel stay for a week or two at a time, with the support of trained mental health workers on site giving them the confidence to get away. It enables carers to have a respite break knowing their loved ones are enjoying a holiday themselves while being looked after.
Forresters gives people experiencing severe mental illness the opportunity to make new friends, meet people, socialise, take part in activities and grow in confidence.
The hotel is a registered care home with 27 beds that offers mental health support to all guests. Many people come to Forresters towards the end of a hospital stay, and can stay for up to six weeks – cutting down on the time spent in hospital. Beds are also sometimes used by the department of psychiatry in Southampton for patients who are coming to the end of their time in hospital.
“We certainly keep admissions for respite care down and as well as giving carers a break. Everyone that stays here feels much better when they leave,” says service manager Lynne McLoughlin.
“They have experiences here they wouldn’t normally have. They make friends, they meet other people with similar problems and a lot of them make long-term relationships and build up their confidence.”
Guests are consulted every Monday afternoon about the activities they would like to do during their stay and a programme is drawn up according to their input. They also complete a questionnaire at the end of every week giving vital feedback to Forresters on how they have experienced their stay. It is just one way in which Rethink puts the people who use its services at the heart of service development – consulting and listening to their feedback to ensure we provide services that meet their needs.
Most guests have visited before and the hotel is usually fully-booked. Forresters takes guests from all over the country and many guests come back for more than one stay every year. They are either self-funded or receive money from social services or charities and convalescent funds to cover the costs of their stay. Guests can either self-refer or are referred by Community Mental Health Teams, carers, GPs, social workers or psychiatrists.
Rethink offers a range of residential and nursing care, from homes designed for people being resettled after long stays in hospital to homes that provide relatively short-term multi-disciplinary assessment.
