Oakland Care keeping residents engaged with the world around them

Driving engagement within their teams and residents, allowing them to feel like they are a part of the conversation

Oakland Care has been part of the Green Mark community for the past 2 years, they are an innovative, dynamic, and forward-thinking care home group that builds and run their own care homes. They have a caring, open, and accepting attitude for all of their care homes and Green Mark fitted into these values.

With the way the world has changed recently with environmental issues, climate change, and the issue of one-use products, Oakland Care knew that they had to adapt their business and something had to change. Green Mark offered them the accessible, helpful & supportive framework they were looking for to act now and not wait to make change.

“After starting our journey with Green Mark, our Environmental contributions and focus on Green practice have gone from strength to strength. We now have a clear path ahead to achieve our goals, and the fact that the Green Mark accreditation is accessible and achievable meant that our whole team could see the impact of our changes early on. This motivates us to consider the positive impact we can make as our business grows.”

Aaron White – Head of Business Services

The team behind the implementation of Green Mark in their care homes has been developing their journey with us by engaging all members of Oakland Care, from Directors at Head Office to the residents they care for. This has caused behavioural change to take root, whereby green thinking is taken into account in the way they run their business. Off the back of this, they have brought in a Green committee, a channel that has a representative from all care homes who engage with local people and share ideas internally too.

An example of engagement in their Green Committee is one resident goes around the care home and collects all the newspapers to recycle them. This isn’t the only resident engaging, Oakland Care’s annual Green Day saw each care home in the group taking part in an activity to help their local environment, this included litter picking, cleaning beaches, and planting trees at a local park. Their work with our team has led them to become the first carbon-neutral care homes in the UK, Green Mark “paved the way” for their greener thinking.

After achieving their Green Mark Level 2 the team at Oakland Care have identified areas for technology to help them with their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, some examples of these include:

• The team now exploring options for solar panels to be installed on their buildings to source clean energy for their estate, team and the people they care for.
• Reviewing their carbon output so that they are aware, monitoring and benchmarking for future operations.
• Looking at smart technology to help with their waste disposal.

Their next goal is Level 3, with all the great initiatives they are doing and implementing they are in very good stead to achieve this. Check back to see when they get it.

You can find their website here, https://oaklandcare.com/ go and have a read.