Edison & Day's Thoughtful Redesign Boosts Occupancy and Enhances Residents' Lives

RCH Care Homes is a high-quality care operator with care homes across Essex, Kent and Cambridgeshire and has been operating for over 30 years. A family-run company with family principles RCH has a vision to “create homes and teams which together, enable our residents to wake up in the morning looking forward to the day ahead, and go to bed at night feeling happy, loved and contented having had a great day.”

Edison & Day were approached by RCH for the full redesign and fit-out of their flagship home, Brentwood Care Centre. We were approached following both the success of the innovative DayLodge® projects which we completed in several of the RCH homes and also a history of providing the group with high-quality furniture in a fast turnaround time.

Brentwood Care Centre had required improvement from the CQC for over 8 years and RCH were on a mission to uplift the look of the home by creating a homely atmosphere that engaged the residents and brought them closer together to create more of a family atmosphere.

Client: RCH Care Homes

Location: Brentwood, Essex

Completion: 2021

Scale: Phased Home Refurbishment

Works Undertaken: Design & Fit-Out

“In the main, the building was tired and looked like the 1980s in terms of the colour palettes and fabrics etc. The home was actually only 15 years old but it was like someone had designed it to make it look older than it actually was.” Torie, Brentwood Care Centre Manager, “The home didn’t flow between the areas, there was no connection between the communal areas and the whole home was very disjointed. There was also nothing that said this is an RCH home when you walked in.”

Edison & Day® were engaged right from the outset and we worked very closely with the team at RCH and Torie, the home manager, to understand the vision they had and what they wanted this refurbishment project to achieve for them. Once the designs had been signed off, we embarked on the full fit-out of Brentwood Care Centre in a phased approach to ensure there was minimal impact to the day-to-day running of the home as the home was still operating while the works were being completed. This project was completed on time and within budget with minimal disruption to the running of the home while we completed the works.

In speaking with Tori after the project was complete, she said "Sarah’s (Head of Design, Edison & Day) experience came absolutely through in every single room that we designed, but then I was also able to say oh I don’t like that colour or I don’t see how that’ll go right in there... It was almost like I was being included in your team which was really nice and is not necessarily always the case."

Shortly after we completed this project Brentwood Care Centre had a CQC inspection, Torie said “Our home had been at ‘required improvement’ for the past 8 years, the CQC inspector we had this time had visited the home many times previously and she told us the change was significant and she instantly recognised the ability for more interaction between the residents and also the residents simply moving around the home more. The environment just wasn’t meeting people’s needs prior to the refurbishment.” Brentwood Care Centre is now at a ‘Good’ CQC rating for the first time in over 8 years.

The dementia unit in this home was one we put extra focus on as they had previously struggled to even half-fill this unit. We’re pleased to say that just 12 months after finishing this project the dementia unit is now at over 70% capacity.

On successful completion of this project, we were then engaged to design and fit-out the remainder of their 9 homes.