It’s been another award-winning week for Balhousie Care Group as the 25-strong care home group celebrates three more wins in a long run of accolades.
Karen Buchan, Senior People Services Advisor at Balhousie Care Group, won the Fantastic HR Advisor category in the cHeRries Awards 2018, organised by The Press and Journal. Abertay University educated Karen has been an integral part of the repositioning of Balhousie Care Group’s human resources team, now called the people services team.
Balhousie Clement Park care home in Dundee won a Scottish Social Services Award for Personalised Environment for interior design changes and multi-sensory therapy aimed at addressing dementia in residents.
And Balhousie Stormont Lodge care home in Blairgowrie picked up two awards in Perthshire’s annual Go for Gold challenge, which saw teams from across the region participate in a range of sporting activities. The home won first place in the poster design category and second overall in the challenge. One of Stormont Lodge’s residents, George Taylor, stole the show by using his ice hockey experience from his younger days to shine in the curling competition.
The awards mark the latest in a long run of accolades for Balhousie Care Group. In May finance director Mike Reid was named Finance Director of the Year at the FDs’ 
Excellence Awards. Last November Operations Director Louise Barnett took the title of Operations Manager of the Year at the National Care Awards. Dementia nurse consultant Yvonne Manson is a finalist in the RCNI Nurse Awards, which celebrates excellence in nursing care U.K.-wide. Yvonne will hear if she has won in July.
This recognition has been topped off with two of the group’s care homes achieving the highest Care Inspectorate rank in the last 12 months.
The new raft of accolades come on the eve of Balhousie Care’s latest stage in a deep cultural and operational shift which has affected the whole group, from recruitment to day-to-day care. On Thursday, June 14, it will launch a new core set of values to take the company into the next stage of its revival.
The care home group, with homes across north and central Scotland, marked the occasion with an endorsement from multi-award-winning businessman Bob Keiller, Chairman of Scottish Enterprise and TED speaker.
Tony Banks said: “Saying that people are the core of a customer-oriented service may sound obvious, but there’s no other way of describing Balhousie Care Group. Our strength really is in numbers – the number of excellent staff we have, from homes right up to head office, and the number of residents and family members who contribute to how we operate. The past 12 months, our 25th year, has been a remarkable period with a string of awards and some top ratings from the Care Inspectorate. It’s extremely rewarding to see our new vision put into action, and I can’t wait to see what’s around the corner.”
