What’s Special About a Cascade Home
Life for residents living at Cascade will often seem quite ordinary, but this ordinariness is the product of a great deal of careful planning and management.
We provide strong informed and effective guidance, with well trained and committed staff who have the competence and capacity to respond effectively and work with residents through all levels of difficulty.
People with a learning disability, autism and/or mental health conditions vary widely in abilities, intelligence, and behaviours. Everyone is impacted differently, though for many, the environment forms the basis for their response. Cascade believe that the living environment serves as an important tool and an individual’s potential may be enhanced by a well-designed living environment and negatively affected by ill-conceived spaces.
The Cascade key environmental design themes are summarised as follows:
Growth and development: Enhance the motivation, confidence and self-esteem of residents by encouraging exploration of their environment and providing spaces for developing interests and skills.
Triggers: Reduce the triggers of agitation and anxiety, by providing comprehensible, coherent spaces that meet the sensory needs of individuals.
Robustness: Keep residents and staff safe in a robust environment that is tolerant of unintended use.
Support tools: Give staff the tools to deliver person centred care and support.
Cascade homes are always located in ‘ordinary’ residential areas and look ‘ordinary’. Cascade homes are in established and stable neighbourhoods and have access to: -
public transport
Shops and cafes
Health services
Education and leisure facilities
Places of employment
Pedestrian friendly routes
Cascade believe ‘small is best’, our homes accommodate 4 to 8 people. Cascade has a vastly experienced admission team who consider it essential that residents who live together have similar needs, routines and life stage, whilst also placing emphasis on age, gender, and personal preferences. Cascade residents are always consulted and listen to before admitting a new resident to a home.
Cascade build comfortable and liveable environments so all residents have structure, clarity, predictability and safety in their surroundings; some of the finer detail: -
All resident bedrooms and staff bedrooms have en-suite facilities.
We provide homes that are easily navigable environments to help residents orientate themselves both physically and socially.
We maximise visual structure by organising the visual environment through clear visual cues by incorporating colour coding, numbers, symbols, labelling and sign boards.
We provide residents with many opportunities for community participation.
We maximise future Independence by providing an environment for learning life skills (adaptive skills) and vocational skills that promotes future independence.
We enable residents to adjust their living environments to the desired level of social engagement in which they feel comfortable, we provide a variety of internal and external spaces to allow residents to engage in social activities on their own terms with refuge offering private spaces to allow residents to retreat from group situations.
We provide spaces for sensory Integration and multi-sensory stimulations. Stimulation can be increased or reduced in the same space with the use of light, shadow and acoustic effects.
We provide all residents with total freedom to access their whole home, especially outdoor spaces, creating a sense of ownership and freedom.
We design environments with appropriate lighting, acoustics, ventilation and use of colour and material.
We use durable attractive materials throughout our facilities. Environments that can withstand unintended use can lessen the physical and emotional impact for residents when they make mistakes.
Where risks to residents and staff are probable, we specify bespoke sturdy furniture with rounded edges.
We design our environments so they can be easily maintained which helps staff spend more time supporting residents. If home environments are easy to maintain, residents are more likely get involved with household tasks like cleaning.
We enhance the acoustic performance of our homes particularly walls and floors with extensive use of sound absorption materials, sound resistant plasterboard and acoustic tiles to minimise transmission of noise.
Anti-flood system fitted to bedroom sinks and bath.
Regulated temperature at hand basin, shower and bath outlets.
Emergency lighting throughout the building.
Bedroom doors fitted with integrated door sensor.
Lighting
We maximise the use of natural light throughout our properties.
We use multiple directional light sources to create a soft and bright effect and indirect lighting where surfaces may create glare and reflection.
All resident’s bedrooms are fitted with concealed LED strip lighting to easily change mood and colour, particularly useful for residents with colour sensitivities.
All lights are non-flickering LED units which are less likely to aggravate light-sensitive residents.
Future Proof
Our homes have a cabling infrastructure and a robust network system that will meet our technology needs now and in the future.
One-to-One
We provide environments for one-to-one life-skill training.
Furniture, Fabric and Finishes
Quality home furnishings are used throughout the facility with harmonious colour schemes.
Residents have a choice of colour schemes for their private bedroom spaces.
Pre-assessment
Our holistic admission process evaluates the physical, emotional, mental health, spiritual, environmental, social, sexual, financial, and cultural needs of an individual prior to admission to one of our homes. We look to identify an individual’s abilities, strengths and preferences. Cascade then creates strong and effective partnerships with health and social care agencies, families and the local community whilst deploying specialist skills, knowledge and time to ensure all residents of our homes are provided with the correct level of;
Physical health support
Mental health support
Positive behavioural support
Through thoughtful design and discussion, Cascade aim to continually enhance the health, wellbeing and quality of life for our residents by constant consultation with families, representatives and more importantly the people who live in our homes.