About Aster Care

Aster Care was established in Portsmouth in 2007 to supply trained staff to learning disability establishments in Hampshire. By 2011, we observed a lack of care provision for people with long-term health conditions who wanted to live at home but were unable due to a lack of basic nursing support and 24 hour continuous support only provided in nursing homes. 

It, therefore, became our mission to provide a 24 hour care at home service whereby staff could be trained to undertake designated clinical task to support these people to remain living at home for as long as they chose to, or until they die. 

This is our strategy:-

• To work with the Portsmouth Clinical Commissioning Group (PCCG), the Solent NHS Trust, and continuing health care teams where this service is likely to be required.
• To familiarise ourselves with the PCCG designated clinical tasks lists.
• To use a values-based approach to recruitment, looking at kindness, reliability, communication skills, and trainability where experience or qualifications may be lacking.
• To ensure that no service user would ever receive care from someone they had not met, and who was not trained to understand their care needs.
• To ensure that no staff member ever steps over the threshold to care for someone they have not been personally trained to care for.
• To provide a foundation training programme for all staff but to then embark on a highly person-centred training programme for each service user they will support to ensure they have the skills for that individual.
• To involve service users and their relatives in the recruitment process to decide who will visit them and undertake their care. This will take place in the service user’s own environment.
• To be flexible in our approach to providing the service, ensuring it is service user led at all times.
• To be a responsive service, changing approach, care and goals at the time they occur rather than at regular junctures that will serve only as prompts if nothing changes.
• To provide an open-door approach to supporting our staff, working flexibly wherever possible to support their employment, again, allowing staff to contact us at the point of need rather than at regular junctures that will serve only as prompts if nothing changes.
• To be responsive to all areas of concern, addressing issues at the first point they are raised and acting to resolve issues from a minor level onwards.

Our Values:

Commitment to our Service Users

We offer a truly person-centred, person-led service with a positive risk-taking approach to enable people with long term conditions to live at home for longer.

Quality

We provide a high quality, personalised service tailored always to the person’s needs, provided by staff trained additionally for each person they will provide care to. We believe this additional layer of training promotes staff satisfaction and improves staff retention.

Integrity

We uphold the highest standards of integrity and deliver care with an open approach in all we do. We seek to have close relationships with our teams of staff, and our service users and their families, in order to respond to concerns or changes immediately in order to build trust and keep relationships intact.

Teamwork

We work in small teams to provide care to service users. We also work across boundaries with health care professionals from a range of backgrounds, and other care providers to meet the needs of our service users.

Respect for People

We are committed to inclusiveness and actively seek to recruit a diverse team of staff with whom we can provide a responsive service to our people. We encourage growth and develop of our staff, and reward their performance. 

Good Citizenship

We are all good citizens in the communities within which we live and work.