For families
A guide for the
hard week.
Most families come to us during a hard week — after a hospital admission, a placement breakdown, or a long search that hasn't found anything that feels right. This page is for them: an honest run-through of what to expect, written for relatives rather than commissioners.
Want to talk to someone today?
The fastest route into a real conversation is the enquiry form at the bottom of this page. A registered manager picks them up directly. Email is also fine.
Questions families ask first
- Can we visit before we decide?
- Yes — and we encourage it. Visits are arranged with the home's registered manager. Where appropriate, your relative can visit too, sometimes more than once.
- Who runs day-to-day care?
- Each home has a registered manager and a deputy who you can contact directly. Day-to-day support is led by your relative's named keyworker, with the wider team around them.
- How will you handle medication?
- Medication is managed by trained staff against a written MAR chart, with regular GP review and pharmacy oversight. We don't make medication changes without consultation with prescribers and, where appropriate, families.
- What if behaviour changes or escalates?
- Behaviour changes are part of the work and we plan for them. Positive behaviour support, low-arousal environments, and de-escalation training are baseline. Where additional clinical input is needed we work with community LD and mental-health teams.
- Can my relative keep their GP?
- Usually yes if the GP catchment overlaps with the home. Where not, we register your relative with a local GP and pass on history. We work with the same handful of practices and pharmacies across each home.
- How does funding work?
- Most placements are funded by local authority commissioning, Continuing Healthcare, or a combination of LA and family top-up. Self-funded placements are also possible. We'll walk you through the paperwork.
- Can we be involved in care planning?
- Yes. Care plans are written collaboratively and reviewed regularly. We share what we can — within the rules around the resident's own consent — and listen carefully to what families know that we don't.
- What happens at end of life?
- Where it's possible to support someone at the home through end of life, we do — with palliative-care advice from the GP and community teams. We don't pretend we're a hospice, but we also try not to move people unnecessarily at the end.
Send us a few details
We try to make the first reply useful.
Tell us who we'd be supporting and what's prompted the search. We'll come back honestly about whether we think Stoneleigh is the right fit — and where you might look if it isn't.
Want to read about admissions first? The full admissions guide is here.