FAQs

A. It is incredibly important to engage in specialist services as soon as you can after diagnosis.

Research has shown that if you can get an individual to engage with a service like The Ness, then the individual having cognitive stimulation will remain independent with reduced care needs for up to a year or more longer. Saving the family a huge amount of money.

However, we also know that the brain is like a muscle and even though the memory might be poor the more stimulation you give to the brain the better it performs and can even improve!

Without external social stimulation you will see rapid deterioration.

A. The Ness Care Group maintain our prices very competitively and each of our services have a specific cost. However, we work closely with health & social care and have a contract across Devon that means many can get partial or total funding support from social care. We will help you with accessing social care assessments and also applying for attendance allowance. Please call or email to get the full pricing list.

A. This is a simple platform that allows you to control your invoicing.

We email you a link and then you complete the form; we hold no bank details and you can cancel it at any time.

Once the account is set up the invoice is emailed to you each month and if correct will automatically debit 3 working days later.

A. We invoice at the end of each month depending on the number of visits.

You can pay either with a cheque, through online banking or our preferred method is setting up a GoCardless Direct Debit account.

A. We work really closely with both Social Services and the NHS and will support families in asking for a social care assessment.

Funding is based on the financial assessment but many of our families are fully or partly funded through social care.

With the recent announcements on increased funding for families from 2022 we expect more people to be eligible for part or full funding. Worth asking!

A. We have to have a strict cancellation policy in order to run a safe and sustainable service. We do recognise that often you have no control over the time of cancellation and good reason for the cancellation but I hope you recognise why we do still need to stick to our policy.

This means that you can cancel at any time up to 48 hours before the visit. If you cancel 48 hours or less you will be charged 50%, 24 hours or less you will be charged 100% of the fee.

A. The Ness Hubs are open 5 days a week every week. Some of our members attend every day of the week (5 days a week) and others once a week.

As mentioned the least you can attend is one half day (session) per week so you build relationships and create a routine.

The average (and best) attendance is at least 2 days a week.

A. It is incredibly important for someone with memory loss to be given a routine. This helps them to make friends, to aid memory and to reduce anxiety. We therefore strongly recommend that once we have found the correct group the individual sticks with that group and attends every week.

If they attend weekly they build friendships and begin to remember some of the therapies.

A. Once you have done your trial day we will get in touch and talk through the next steps. There can at times be a waiting list, but we recognise the need to get someone started as soon as possible and so we will begin working with an individual immediately in some form. This might be on a half day or with our outreach service.

From our experience it can take up to 5 visits before an individual feels comfortable with the group. In this time it is so important that the family encourage attendance and we will encourage continuing because after this initial anxiety, majority of people settle into a fun comfortable routine.

A. Yes everyone gets a free half day. This is a really important both for the individual to decide if they enjoy our hub and for us to assess whether they are in the correct group and enjoying the sessions.