SOUTH West Surrey MP Jeremy Hunt has officially opened the new £10m Farnham Mill nursing home.

Located on the A325 just off the Shepherd and Flock roundabout, the home offers a safe refuge for many older people living with severe forms of dementia.

The state-of-the-art home is the fourth to be opened by family-run independent care provider Woodlands Hillbrow, adding to its three existing homes in Ewshot and Church Crookham, and is set to create 100 jobs.

Farnham Mill has been open since June and is welcoming new residents and staff in phases – with 22 of its 60 bedrooms currently occupied.

It is hoped the nursing home, which also offers a day centre for older people with dementia still living in the community, will be filled to capacity within 18 months to two years – helping to meet the area’s growing demand for specialist dementia care.

Mr Hunt, Farnham MP and Foreign Secretary, visited the home last Friday to declare it officially open, and he also enjoyed speaking to residents after a tour led by company directors Alison Lee and Gabriel Martinez.

Mr Hunt said: “First of all I’m really proud we’ve got this in Farnham, and secondly I think everywhere in the country is having to adapt to meet the growing demands of an ageing population.

“What we want is Farnham is to have the highest quality care available. I think that is what we see here."

Mr Hunt continued: “What I like about it is it is a family business. You feel there is a real passion and commitment to do what they do.

“We are all realising that if you get dementia, it doesn’t have to be the end of the world. It doesn’t have to be a death sentence. You can live well with dementia.

“But that means getting the highest quality care, and here they don’t just have very good residential care, they also have a day centre.”

Mr Hunt also praised the home’s “wonderful” commitment to covering residents’ fees after three years if they run out of money, saying he had “never come across that before”, adding that the home was “a really super addition to the town”.

Explaining the thinking behind the home’s phased opening, Jo Grinyer, general manager at Woodlands Hillbrow, added: “It’s a brave move because obviously we get lots and lots of enquiries and you want to accomodate everybody, but the most important thing with dementia care is that we get to know the residents and their life history.

"Every single admission is so important that we get it right for that person and they can settle.”

Jo said that Woodlands Hillbrow places great importance on training its staff, adding that the provider is proud to have never had to employ agency staff.

“Through the excellent training programmes that we deliver, we are really able to care for those residents who really have quite high levels of need, and maybe other homes haven’t been able to meet those needs,” she continued.

Company director Gabriel Martinez added: “There’s a huge demand for specialist dementia care in this area, but quite often we will have residents who have been given notice in another home just because they have peed in a corridor or something.

“That’s part of the illness and you should be able to care for anybody. It doesn’t matter what their needs are if you have the right staff with the right training. The staff have got to feel valued and respected to be happy. That’s how you deliver good care.”

Gabriel added that Farnham Mill’s bedrooms and public areas were larger than the majority of other care homes, “because our perspective is how would we want our own family to be looked after, and you don’t want to be in a little shoebox tucked away”.

He added that children visiting their grandparents can help themselves to Diet Coke and biscuits, toys and outdoor games, and next year the home will even install an ice cream maker.

“It’s just simple things like that that make a difference,” he said.