Cinnamon Care to attract more self –paying senior residents from the UK, USA and Europe
A Sri Lankan elderly care service, will be expanding its facilities for more self –paying senior residents in the UK, the US and other European countries to spend the latter part of their retired lives in high-end-care homes in Sri Lanka, Managing Director of Cinnamon Care Services (Pvt.) Ltd, Jeff Wicks told the Business Times.
Staff at the Centre
Cinnamon Care Services is seeking to coordinate with organisations in Sweden, Singapore, Germany, the UK, Oman and other parts of the Middle East etc and thereby attract retirees to Sri Lanka.
In an e-mail communiqué from London, Mr. Wicks disclosed that Cinnamon Care was currently in discussions with the Care Quality Commission in England (CQC) to find out options to broaden the regulator’s mandate to cover international facilities as this would provide a certain degree of confidence to senior British citizens considering international retirement with care.
“We are trying to find out as to whether there is scope for CQC to cover and approve overseas facilities. Given the high cost of elderly care and dementia care in the UK, I’m sure that more and more people are going to look at overseas facilities if they’re offering a UK standard of care,” he added.
A little over two years ago, Cinnamon Care Services opened its first care home at Kuruduwatte , Bandaragama as an overseas offering to self-paying residents from the UK, the US and older people in Sri Lanka itself.
“The company is planning to open a second, smaller facility in the centre of Colombo soon,” he revealed adding that there are around a million Sri Lankan-British nationals around the UK and they could be attracted to facilities like Cinnamon Grove in Bandaragama.
Cinnamon Grove, the Bandaragama facility, is Sri Lanka’s most luxurious and modern assisted living facility located in a 3-acre estate, surrounded by pristine rubber plantations and only 20 minutes drive from the capital Colombo, he disclosed. Designed and operated by British healthcare professionals, this state of the art residential home brings for the first time to Sri Lanka a wealth of international experience and knowledge in the fields of dementia and retirement care.
Mr. Wicks set up Cinnamon Care with his mother, Milithra, who was born in Sri Lanka but left the island in her early 20s to study in the UK. She is the director of care, a geriatric specialist having managed a group of high quality assisted living facilities in the UK for the past 25 years and also a sign-off mentor for the University of Glamorgan’s overseas nursing programme.
‘Caring Times’, one of the UK’s leading senior care magazines has given a wide coverage to Sri Lanka’s ‘Cinnamon Grove’ in a front page article for going the extra mile to ensure its residents receive the very best care, he disclosed.
Having interviewed Cinnamon Care Services’ managing director, Jeff Wicks, during one of his visits to the UK, the editor of the Caring Times was intrigued by what had been achieved by this family owned organization.
There are a multitude of high quality senior care facilities spread across Asia, but this was the first time one has made it to the front cover of the UK’s leading industry sector magazine, he said adding that it was a major achievement by a fledgling Sri Lankan based organization and something, which should inspire entrepreneurs across the island.