 The Society was founded in June 1862 as the Royal Surgical Aid Society, by Mr William Watson.
Over the next 90 years the Society provided 1,929,210 surgical aids to those in need, not only in the UK, but in many other countries, including China. When the National Health Service took over this work, the Society decided to set up homes to care for older people and this role has continued to the present day.
Our first Royal Patron was King Edward VII.
King George V succeeded him in 1910 and two years later granted the ‘Royal’ title to the Society. Royal patronage has continued to the present day, with HRH the Duchess of Gloucester becoming the Society’s latest patron in 1984.
We own and manage four homes; Dorset House in Worcestershire, the Bradbury Centre in Middlesex, High Broom in East Sussex and Gloucester House in Kent. We care for some 200 older people.
We provide dementia, nursing, residential and day care services. Additionally, the AgeCare Awards Team develop and deliver specialist staff development programmes in the care of older people.
These range from our BTEC qualification (Induction), NVQ2, 3 and 4, statutory training, leadership and management development and specialist workshops on a wide range of care and management issues.
We deliver these not only in our own homes, but also to some 70 other homes and organisations, workshops to a much larger number of organisations and also work in the Czech Republic.
Our work is very highly respected and, over the last few years, we have either won or been finalists in no less than 10 national level awards. We have over 300 staff and an annual operating budget of £6.8 million.
In March 2006, we launched our Dementia Care Campaign to commit £6m in six years to improve existing services, develop new ones and focus our work much more on the desperate and growing need for specialist dementia care. |
