EachStep Blackburn Celebrates Topping Out Ceremony!

Community Integrated Care was proud to host the topping out celebration today for EachStep Blackburn, its new specialist £4.8m dementia care service. The celebration marked the midway point in its construction, with the roof of the home being completed.

The event was attended by some of Community Integrated Care’s key partners in this development – One Voice, Age UK, and Blackburn with Darwen Council, including its councillors and its health and social care commissioning team. The event was co-hosted with LNT, the developers of the home, who specialise in the design and build of care homes for older people.

EachStep Blackburn is set to open in summer 2016. At this service, the charity will provide its unique ‘EachStep’ brand of dementia care. This sees Community Integrated Care provide a holistic range of specialist care and support from one cutting-edge service, to assist people who live with dementia throughout their journey with the condition. It also aims to act as a community hub – with the service sharing its resources, knowledge and space with local people and community groups.

The three storey service will include a 64 bedded care home that will provide respite support, residential care and nursing care. As well as providing an extensive range of specialist facilities for the people it will support, the service will also offer several amenities for the local community to enjoy and utilise – including a café and landscaped gardens.

This development comes as part of a strategic aim by Blackburn with Darwen Council to modernise and continue to improve local care services for older people. The service will support the goals of the local authority to keep people at home for longer and to avoid unnecessary admissions into hospital.

It is anticipated that this new care service will create over 100 permanent jobs in a range of care, management and administrative roles. The charity will begin its first recruitment effort for the home this week, with it advertising nursing positions on the Community Integrated Care website.

Neil Matthewman, Chief Executive of Community Integrated Care, says: “We were thrilled to bring together our partners to celebrate progress with the construction of EachStep Blackburn. We have great ambitions for EachStep Blackburn, as we are striving to create a home that offers the highest standards of dementia care and becomes a real resource for the local community. Whilst construction is continuing, we are also very busy forming partnerships with local community group. We are looking forward to celebrating the opening of the home this summer.”

Councillor Mohammed Khan, Leader of Blackburn with Darwen Council, said: “It is great to see things are progressing well. I was very impressed by what I saw on the tour. I am very pleased to see such investment being brought into the borough and I am also very pleased about the number of jobs this development could potentially create.”

Councillor Mustafa Desai, Executive Member for Health and Adult Social Care, said: “I am delighted to see the progress of this important development. This is exactly the type of facility we need in this borough. Our older people deserve the highest quality services and when built, this care home will offer exactly that.”

Christine Cooper, Managing Director at LNT Group, says: “Topping out is always a special moment in the construction of any care home, marking the moment when the building is water-tight and we can crack on with getting the interiors ready.  The once derelict site of the Royal Infirmary will host a state-of-the-art 64 bed care home, with all the creature comforts and tasteful décor you would expect of being at home.  From the completed exterior of the home, you can already see what a wonderful facility EachStep Blackburn will be for the local community.”