Merry Christmas from Anchor Hanover

My festive video message for 2018

 

Hello everyone, I'm Jane Ashcroft, Anchor Hanover’s Chief Executive. We’ve just finished our end of year board meeting and I’m here in a hotel in Birmingham, so forgive the background noises you might hear.

So as we get to the end of 2018 it has been a momentous year, and a year in which we’ve created Anchor Hanover.

Hanover and Anchor each had over half a century of history, meaning the newly merged organisation is being constructed on incredibly solid foundations. A lot of hard work is going into building innovative organisation, where we will create a much brighter, happier future for even more older people.

During the year the two organisations achieved a huge amount, as well as simply being merged. Thanks to support from our suppliers, our colleagues raised donations worth almost £25,000 for Contact the Elderly and across the two organisations we raised nearly £70,000 for Macmillan at 385 of our locations.

Our care arm was recognised by HealthInvestor as the residential care provider of the year, and now has the most outstanding ratings of any large care provider from our regulator the Care Quality Commission.

We’ve had loads of achievements in the Great British Care Awards, with many of my amazing colleagues being shortlisted and winning national prizes for the great work they do.

Our strong commitment to being pet friendly was recognised when Hanover won the RSPCA Gold Paw Print Award, which we were all delighted about.

Our new developments are proving very popular and I’m really looking forward to Pemberly Place, an innovative mixed rental and share ownership development, coming online next year.

Thanks to the hard work that we were involved in, and others in the housing sector, the Government has reversed its proposal to change supported housing funding and recognise the importance of specialist retirement housing in enabling people to live at home independently for longer.

Our services play an enormously important role 365 days a year, and I’m always so impressed by the planning that my colleagues put into making Christmas a great time for the people who live with us. It can also be a sad time for people, reflecting on losses during the year, and bringing people together and creating a supportive environment where you can make new friends is what later life should be about for all of us

So, thank you to all of my colleagues across Anchor Hanover for the hard work that has been put into making 2018 a very successful year. As two separate organisations we achieved a lot and we are undoubtedly going to achieve even more together in the future. 

If you are working over Christmas and you are watching this; I really appreciate your hard work, and I wish everybody a very happy Christmas and all the best for the new year.