Devonshire House and Devonshire Lodge Care Home

I visit my mother regularly and find the staff extremely helpful and friendly. She is very happy here and I would say that the cleanliness and hygiene has improved over the past 6 months. This may be because the number of staff seems to have increased. I would like to know more about what my mother does during the week i.e. activities she joins in with as obviously I can't hear from her.

The staff at the care home have a lovely manner with the patients. In over a year visiting twice weekly I have never found anyone being negative towards patients, they are a wonderful team. My mother has been well fed and hydrated. There have been activities arranged even though the patients are difficult to engage in these. There has only been 1 incident in the whole time, missing glasses when she went to the hairdresser that were not found. My mother died this evening, the staff were exemplary in the way they handled this.

She spent time in hospital in May 2015 and was sent back to the home for end of life care. I cannot praise the staff enough for their care of mum and me too during the last five weeks of her life. My one observation would be that the staff deserve a much higher pay rate.

I have recommended BD to many others, and would be happy passing some of my last days there too.

Our father recently passed peacefully away after 18 months of palliative care at Bickleigh Down Care Home. My family can only praise the staff who cared for him, they looked after him like one of their own family. They showed him respect and treated him with dignity, always caring but very professional. My two brothers visited him daily at varying times and were always welcomed by the friendly staff who kept them informed of our dad's condition. I live 240 miles away yet, whenever I rang the staff because I was concerned after talking to him on the telephone, they would check on him and telephone me back, no matter what time it was. It gave us peace of mind to see that he had the right support and he felt happy, safe and secure . The staff encouraged him when he needed encouragement but were understanding and showed great kindness when he became increasingly frail. There were times when we felt the staff were particularly kind and supportive to him, beyond their duty. Some of the staff were able to attend our dad's funeral and their grief at his passing was clear to see. A thank you to the staff at Bickleigh Down Care Home for caring with such gentleness and kindness.