Fresh from its ‘Best exterior space’ win at this year’s Pinders Design Awards, Caring Times editor Anna Dobbie visited Hallmark Care’s Hutton View in Brentwood, to walk through its celebrated gardens and see what it takes to make a winner.

Hutton View Care Home in Brentwood, Essex, was purpose-built by care home construction company Savista Developments on the former site of Essex County Fire and Rescue Service’s headquarters. Opening its doors in October 2020, Hallmark Care managing director Avnish Goyal hosted the home’s virtual launch online.

With strong links to the Brentwood Chamber of Commerce, every effort has been made to ensure that the 77-bedroom development is one of the most advanced homes offering residential and dementia care. During the planning process, thought was given to how to include innovations that would enhance the daily lives of residents, including five unique roof terraces, a log cabin for activities and outdoor events, fully landscaped gardens and a sensory walk. Indoor features include a café, hair salon, therapy room, cinema, celebrations and music rooms, as well as a library and a farmhouse kitchen.

“With all of our facilities and specially designed rooms, such as the café and library, we have ensured we are adopting the newest research regarding care homes, and are proud to be able to make good use of our 20 years of experience in care home design and management,” said general manager Louise Baxter.

“I passionately believe in Hallmark’s vision to create communities that enhance the quality of life and give rise to new beginnings and new futures. Hutton View is a home offering exceptional care in beautiful surroundings and I feel privileged to be leading a passionate and dedicated team to enable this.”

Touring the grounds, it’s easy to see how the home won ‘Best exterior space’ at Pinders. The gardens at Hutton View are broken down into smaller intimate spaces surrounded by mature trees, with continual pathways taking residents and visitors past a greenhouse, summerhouse with a kitchen and outdoor WC, raised planters, as well as an area where residents can play minigolf and a very sweet aviary populated by chirpy canaries.

Outdoor spaces have also been created on the upper levels within each community and residents have access to patios with outdoor seating in the ground floor bedrooms, dining rooms and lounges.

“The team at Savista and Hallmark worked extremely hard to make the outdoor space a tranquil haven for residents to continue a love for gardening, enjoy the fresh air and take part in activities such as minigolf,” said Baxter.

“The gardens at Hutton View are a key part of our residents’ wellbeing and we are extremely proud to have won this award. All of our residents can access gardens any way any time. It’s part of our strategy for dementia care and wellbeing for people to be out in the garden to be able to feel the elements. The positioning of the balconies, east and west, means that you have the morning sun if you wanted to have your breakfast on a balcony, and you’ve got the afternoon sun on another balcony in the afternoon. We’ve got the gazebo, we’ve also got the summer house, which is such a lovely space, used by artists because apparently, the lighting is brilliant. The garden has also been great to bring in the wider community.”

As well as the aviary, Hutton View has two resident dogs, Molly and Charlie.

When asked if caring for the dogs had made life harder, Baxter retorted that “it doesn’t matter if it makes life harder for us – it’s about the resident, you can’t try to remove their pet from them”.

“Nobody could separate me from mine. We look at relationships-centred care – that includes relations with your animals, your loved ones – it’s not just about human beings.” When Molly’s owner joined the home, Baxter looked into the policies and procedures and checked the team and residents for any objections.

“Now they’re part of us at Hutton View. We tell people when they come to look around, and nine times out of 10, they’re delighted because Molly and Charlie are just gorgeous. They fit in well, it feels like a home here.”

The home is also currently in the process of onboarding the Cinnamon Trust, a national charity that specialises in keeping companion animals with their elderly or mobility impaired owners. “Molly is still a young dog so she would probably like to go bouncing through the fields, and being able to factor that in every single day can sometimes be a challenge. Sometimes she doesn’t have as long a walk as perhaps she would like, so we’re using the Cinnamon Trust to support us and make sure that they’re well catered for.”

Hutton View is more than just a pretty face, according to Baxter – it’s very high tech too. The EMS nurse call system that logs where people are around the building has built-in sensors so that if a resident can’t remember where the bathroom is, a subtle light will immediately come on showing the way to the en suite and alerting staff if the resident is out of bed for longer than the allocated time depending on his or her needs.

There is also a range of tablets that residents can use to video chat with loved ones and interactive TVs in the cinema lounge allow residents to chat on a larger screen, as well as stream funerals, church services or even Joe Wicks workouts.

“When somebody dies, often our residents are unable to get to the funeral for various reasons – it could be a mobility issue, it could be that there weren’t enough team members or that maybe they didn’t feel that they could because they didn’t know the family,” said Baxter. “Now when somebody does pass away, residents and staff can say goodbye because we nearly always get the link from the funeral director.”

Baxter also feels that Hutton View has exceptional team recognition, with lots of support from line managers and above: “We’ve got infection controllers, we’ve got quality monitoring teams, we’ve got our regional teams, we’ve got health and safety specialists within those areas. We’ve got marketing and PR, we’ve got excellent care teams, mental health, first aiders, etc. We were ahead of the curve, rather than following behind.”

The CQC also commended Hutton View at its latest inspection of the team’s training. “Everybody has at least two weeks, which is a blended training; it’s much more complex, with some virtual and then some e-learning. Then they have their time on the floor working day shifts, which takes as long as it takes, with regular reviews.”

Baxter is even able to see the positives from the pandemic: “I think, for the residents, it’s been difficult, but the flip side to that, which is wonderful, is that we had so few residents, in the beginning, that meant we started to establish that family relationship. We were fully locked down to new admissions and everything else for about four months, so we just had six residents and all of our teams. We got to know them and became their extended family because, at that time, they were so restricted in how they saw their own family.”

Looking to the future, the aim is to open up the rest of the rooms and scale-up, while maintaining the level of care and ‘family feel’. Baxter says: “You could have a really beautiful building, you could have all of the stuff we’ve talked about, but you can’t fake how it feels to be here. It feels somewhere that you would want to be; it’s somewhere that our residents want to be and people generally go away from here feeling on a high. That’s what I hope that our legacy is and we will never lose it.”

I have to say, I do feel it – Hutton View seems like a lovely place to live. To conclude my visit, I sample the delicious lunch menu (chicken, basil and coconut soup to start, followed by steak and merlot pie, chips and vegetables and a small piece of apple and blackberry crumble to finish), before running into ‘Henry VII’ as he prepares to give a historical speech for the residents. There never is a dull moment at Hutton View.