A new approach to care in the home

By Angela Prichard,

Taking care of older people in their own home is a much-valued personal service that has seen a huge growth in demand.   Home Instead, with offices at Masterlord Office Village covering Ipswich, Felixstowe and Woodbridge, is part of a worldwide network of home care services.

Providing care, companionship and support, their carers ensure that advancing age and specialist needs don’t prevent people from staying in their own home.  Every individual  receives personalised care depending on their needs, from washing and dressing to helping around the house, or simply companionship.

What sets Home Instead apart is their dedication to matching the personality of a carer with the person they are visiting, building a personal as well as a professional relationship. This includes succession planning when carers have to change, to provide continuity.

Head of community engagement Wendy Chard is always looking at new ways to engage with people, including a monthly dementia café event held at Waitrose (book in advance 01473 272301), or recruiting at Costa for semi-retired or younger people interested in a career in care with flexible hours.  They’re currently looking to fill 50 vacancies!

The team also work on a range of initiatives in the community.  Their latest immersive experience arrived in a bus, parked outside their offices on Gamma Terrace. The ‘virtual dementia’ simulator gave more than 80 carers, friends and family the opportunity to experience for themselves some of the challenges of living with dementia.

Said Wendy Chard, “The virtual experience gives our carers an experience of what life is like for people living with dementia. Although they have City and Guilds accredited dementia training, the experience helps them to better understand the condition, making sure we can deliver the best quality of care to our wonderful clients.”

Using headphones and special glasses to replicate failing eyesight, this ‘virtual’ experience is a valuable tool in raising awareness and increasing knowledge, funded by the West Suffolk Clinical Commissioning Group.

At the heart of Home Instead are the people they support. Head of care Anne Belton said, “We have a holistic approach, to allow people to remain living as they wish, in their own home.”

Chris and Susanna Lye founded the company in 2009 and had offices on Beta terrace for 12 years before moving to their current, larger offices on Gamma terrace.  In 2019, Home Instead won a prestigious Suffolk Care Award for excellent service delivery.

For more information: homeinstead.co.uk/ipswich or call 01473 272301

Window Film Centre

By Angela Prichard,

When Nils Hansen walked into the original Masterlord Estates office next to the café back in 2005, he needed premises for his window filming business. Having outgrown his original site in Martlesham he felt that he needed to be nearer to his car dealership customers.

“They said ‘Come and have a look at this’, and showed me plans for new units at K-Line House.”  Now, more than 15 years later, the hugely successful Window Film Centre has grown to many times its original size and is one of Masterlord’s longest-standing tenants.

“I was able to specify exactly what I needed for the business and the EasyLet agreement made it a simple process with no legal fees.  We like the atmosphere here, it’s a great place to work, well maintained and we’re close to our local dealer customers plus the A12 and A14,” added Nils.

Another plus for Window Film Centre was the ability to add more office or workshop space as they expanded, and plenty of parking.

Nils looks after sales and marketing, while his highly experienced team (some of whom have been with him since the company’s inception), look after the commercial and residential window filming projects, and their other markets of automotive and prestige Fairline motor yachts.

In schools and offices, where sun streams through windows that often don’t open, rooms overheat. Window filming is more effective at blocking heat plus cheaper and cleaner than blinds – and more hygienic.  It also saves energy. A lot of building contractors turn to the Window Film Centre as the experts in retrofitting suitable film, which lasts more than 20 years.

New build properties have excellent insulation and often underfloor heating. Combined with lots of glazing allowing in sunlight the interiors can get hot even in winter and incredibly uncomfortable in summer. Retro fitting an external window film can prevent this from happening

 

“Sunlight will damage furniture, fabrics and artwork,” explains Nils. “But no developer puts film on the windows, so it’s down to the owner and that’s where we can help.” Conservatories are also a popular place to add window film, to control temperature.

The automotive window tinting and paint protection film part of the business sees an impressive range of luxury and high performance cars arriving at the Masterlord workshop, where skilled technicians fit film to each customer’s specification. It’s one of the most challenging parts of their work, requiring absolute precision. This same dedication to quality is undertaken on all their clients cars be it a 30year old Land Rover Defender or a Vauxhall Corsa. They are all equally important to us says Nils

For luxury Fairline motor yachts, the Window Film Centre team heads for Oundle, where the boats are built, plus at their Ipswich Sea Trials Centre and even to a marina anywhere in Europe to retrofit window tinting either on or out of the water!