Sipping coffee at a Nightingale House café window table overlooking the south London home's vast and verdant outdoor space, Nightingale Hammerson chief executive Helen Simmons points to a building in the garden area.
At some point later this year, that renovated property will echo to the sound of young voices as a second site for Wimbledon Jewish nursery Apples and Honey. At a home where the average age of entry is 90 - and around 10 per cent of the 160 residents are aged 100 or more - she is excited by the prospect of inter-generational engagement.
"There's a lot of evidence internationally about how positive that can be for the children and the elderly people they are interacting with. We already have schools and nurseries visiting but not on a daily basis. That will be the real change. There are a lot of potential wonderful moments where we'll all be crying."
Nursery aside, this is a pivotal time for the Clapham home and its north London counterpart, Hammerson, where a £36 million redevelopment starts next year. Hammerson will be closed during the construction process and the charity will be ploughing up to another
£2 million into a new 15-bed Nightingale unit for Hammerson residents. Ms Simmons said that with a current capacity of 194, the home could accommodate all 47 people at Hammerson if they elected to move there. "Quite a lot of people are considering that and we are organising weekly minibus trips from Hammerson for anyone who wants to see us. Some people are already transferring - it depends on care needs. We want to keep everyone in the family if we possibly can.
"Many of the furnishings will be moved from Hammmerson to make it very homely. Hopefully we can keep some Hammerson staff in the new unit." And it would be "ideal" if a group of senior staff could transfer to the rebuilt Hammerson. "The best training would be for them to go through the ranks here."
The living wage will bring a crisis within care placements
Extensive support was being given to Hammerson residents and their families during the transition. "If they want to stay in north London, we're working with Jewish Care and Sunridge Court [in Golders Green] to organise visits to the homes and to keep them updated on where there are spaces."
Work on the new Nightingale accommodation will start in early summer, after Tooting-based St George's Hospital vacates its independent unit on the site. St George's has been back for a second six-month "winter pressure" overspill. "When hospitals become full, they are looking for extra space," she explained. "It's an over-65s unit and they are all eating kosher food."
Revenue generated by the arrangement will "contribute to works we want to do at the home".
Eighty per cent of Nightingale residents have some form of dementia and close to half require nursing care. Three of its five units are devoted to nursing care and Ms Simmons can only see demand increasing. "On our Wohl unit, which was opened around five years ago as a dementia residential unit, we have converted half the 20 rooms into nursing," she reported. "We anticipate converting the remainder to nursing over time.
"The challenge is maintaining people's independence. You are scared of them falling over - you need to put in as many precautions as possible to minimise the number of times they fall. But you still want them to go into the garden and take part in activities."
Longer term, Ms Simmons worries about the impact of the introduction of the living wage, fearing "a crisis within care placements". The majority of the market is private and she has sat in meetings where providers have said "that if a home no longer makes a profit because of the living wage, they'll close it. They'll only build in areas where there are self-funders [as opposed to local authority clients].
"How that will impact on the not-for-profit sector worries me. There are homes closing across the country and the changes haven't come in yet."
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