Excelcare introduces dementia-friendly signage into their care homes

At Excelcare, team members in each of the care homes work hard to ensure residents feel safe, happy and entertained on a daily basis. They provide personal care to each of the residents to support their needs but also encourage those who are more active, to be independent and maintain their mobility levels. A key part of being independent is ensuring residents can easily access different parts of the care home and be able to find the different rooms and facilities with ease.

However, this can be more challenging for those living with dementia, as the condition can disorientate them, meaning it becomes more difficult to find their way around the care home. To help solve this problem, Excelcare has partnered with The Sign Shop to supply its care homes with dementia-Friendly signage. This signage features bold letters, icons and bright colours to provide residents with clear guidance to different room locations. Fitting this type of signage in a care home helps to increase independence levels, reduces residents’ anxiety and provides them with more memorable reference points, meaning they are less likely to become confused.

Some of the different areas that residents find these signs most useful for, includes the toilet door, bedrooms and communal areas, as each of these places can easily be mistaken by people with dementia. As well as traditional signage formats, some care homes in the group have turned full doors into attractive signs to make it even easier for residents to navigate the care home. This type of signage has been implemented at Queen’s Oak Care Home, in Peckham and Limetree Care Home, in Tulse Hill, the residents have felt a real benefit from it. They further aided accessibility by turning each residents’ room into a different coloured beach hut, so rather than looking for a small number on the door, they can find their way to the purple beach hut, for example.

As part of the renovation works across the group, dementia-friendly signage will be installed to ensure all of the residents can benefit from increased independence and much easier access to key facilities. Excelcare has recently employed an interior designer, who will help to advise each care home how to implement this effectively and safely.

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