The Northam Care Trust is a charity formed as Northam Lodge in 1978 and our mission is to support people with learning and physical disabilities in having choice and control in achieving the best possible quality of life, evidenced by real quality outcomes and supported by our passion for excellence.

We are based in Northam and Bideford in North Devon and have developed person centred support for people with profound and multiple learning and other disabilities and complex needs in residential and day activities. Excellent communication, respect, dignity, engagement, support for carers and a set of values and behaviours underpin our work and add value with personalisation at the core.

We are the only organisation in North Devon and North Cornwall providing this high care specialist service and we are a vital resource for families and carers whose relatives live in our accommodation or use our community support facilities including the range of day activities we offer at Rose Hill.

Our clients have access to specialist health and therapeutic services and we are currently hoping to initiate new technology such as ‘Eye Gaze’ in our work to help people to better communicate their wishes, needs and choices to our committed and well trained staff teams.

We always set out to ensure that we offer responsive, caring, inclusive, integrated and well led services in settings where families, friends and carers will always find a warm welcome.

The Northam Care Trust aims to maintain, sustain and improve its current provision and this includes offering bespoke support in improved buildings and new environments.

We are looking to extend our services across N Devon and N Cornwall and to ensure that we also support carers in planned or crisis situations.
We will work with the business communities in looking at all opportunities for support in our charitable endeavours and continue to work closely with Devon County Council on furthering the work we do across client groups without taking the focus away from the people we currently support.

New project work in local communities is part of our strategic planning and we recognise that we need to look at attracting grant funding for this start up work. We believe that we have an exciting future. In support of this we will look after our valued staff and continue to invest in them and will put the people we support at the very heart of everything we do.

At the current time we support men and women who have both learning and physical disabilities and whose ages range between 18 and 80. We are a specialist service and, because of the expertise of our staff team, we are able to support people who have epilepsy, feeding problems and other health care needs. We will work alongside the generic and specialist health care teams who also provide support to individuals.

Each Lodge has a distinctive feel of its own, and all clients have individual care plans to ensure their needs are met and the services tailored specifically to them. There is access to specialist health and therapy services, and our 100+ members of staff are carefully selected and trained to understand each individual’s needs, wishes and choices. Each Lodge has a warm, homely atmosphere and families and friends will always find a warm welcome.

We provide activities at home such as art and craft, games, cookery, music and movement, drama, multi-sensory sessions and many other similar activities. At present, we are fortunate to have three vehicles allocated for clients’ use and therefore they are able to take part in day to day activities such as shopping, visiting local attractions, horse riding, swimming and simple pleasures such as going to the beach or walking on the Tarka Trail.

We always welcome feedback from families on an informal basis and we actively encourage family involvement.