Who Are VIDA Healthcare?
Vida Healthcare are specialist care providers based around Harrogate in North Yorkshire, with three cutting edge facilities offering early-onset dementia care, residential dementia care, complex dementia care, young onset dementia care, Huntington’s disease care and also respite services.
Vivid Care have a long-standing friendship and working relationship with Vida, as we have worked together on developing various new specialist seating solutions in the past. That’s why we approached them first for the trial of our new Lento Neuro care chair, when they recently opened their new state-of-the-art house at Vida Court for people with Huntington’s Disease.
Their decades of experience and training combined with the individualistic care-plan approach they consistently adopt; meant we could rely on their constructive feedback and suggestions based on real patient experiences.
In the words of the two Occupational Therapists who we also collaborated with on this project, “you don’t often see care spaces as good as this in the UK, and the level of care, heart, and understanding they show in regard to their patients demonstrates thorough, high quality training.”
The Background
We originally began the journey of developing a supportive and comfortable “cocooning” care chair for people with neurological conditions, after our in-house assessors noticed there was a lack of any seating solution in the market that was truly comfortable, at the same time as being functional.
There needed to be a chair that could calm people with ataxic movement and meet their other complex postural, pressure care and mental health needs, whilst also feeling like a chair they would want in their home, something to adapt with them for many years, and one that they could even sleep in.
Find out more about the revolutionary new chair we have since launched: The Lento Neuro
The Trial Process
After 18 months of developing such a chair, we arranged a full patient trial at Vida Court under the experienced and watchful eye of the expert carers there.
A lovely lady with Huntington’s Disease, who would prefer not to be named but is often referred to as the “Miracle Lady”, is already many years into her Huntington’s journey. She is loved for her fun-loving personality, love of Strictly Come Dancing, and joy when able to go outside for walks in the garden.
We provided Ms Miracle Lady with our final Lento Neuro prototype, for a trial that lasted over two months at Vida Court. It was transformative to her life as it could not only be adjusted and easily positioned in her room for watching TV, having her meals in, and even sleeping in, but she could also be safely wheeled outside for her walks which she loves so much. All whilst having the peace of mind that her skin integrity and pressure relief was being fully cared for.
The Result
The result of our Lento Neuro trial at Vida Court told its own profound story: our Miracle Lady showed so many improvements in her mental and physical health after using the chair, as well as being much easier to care for by the staff at the care home, that the decision was made to purchase it for her ongoing use!
Due to her vastly enhanced comfort, and therefore rest on her body during the day, she was getting noticeably better sleep, even falling asleep for the night during her favourite TV shows! She also started to get much longer nights, which in turn led to a much-improved mood – her main carer is now a male, which she would not have previously allowed!
Garden walks are even more of a favourite during the warmer months now, as she can be taken outside in her new chair in such comfort that she stays out for much longer periods of time, which is so much more fulfilling for her.
She takes regular full advantage of the incremental recline and adjustable features of the seat and back-rest too, as she has not only found a perfect upright position for eating her meals in but can also lie back to enjoy Strictly and go to sleep.
Finally, carers have found that moving her from the bed to her chair (and vice versa) is now significantly easier – the seat can be raised up to an ideal height for her to put her hand on the bed and be lifted onto it in just a few minutes by a single carer. A vast improvement to their previous process, which often involved a hoist and multiple carers.
In the end, our Lento Neuro trial at Vida Court turned out to demonstrate perfectly just how life changing and health enhancing this new seating solution can be, not only for people with Huntington’s Disease (such as Ms Miracle Lady), but also for people with other neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s, Dementia, and more.
