Beyond the Brochure: what to look for when finding a care home

Nobody teaches you what to look for when finding a care home. Not really. You can read CQC reports, study websites, compare fees, but when the time comes most families find themselves about to walk through a door to a place that they – or a loved one – may call home without an idea of what they should be looking for.

Any care home can send you a brochure. Most will offer a guided tour showcasing the best room, the nicest corridor, perhaps the garden on a good day. But the things that actually tell you whether this is the right place for you or a loved one are often more subtle.

What follows is not a checklist exactly. It is more a guide to those details and things that help to reveal whether life is being well-lived to the full in the care home you’re visiting. If you are thinking about care and how to find a care home, all of them are worth your attention.

1. Stop, look and…listen

Before you have been shown a room, stop, look and listen. The arrival experience of a care home tells you a great deal. Pay attention to what you hear. Is there life in the building? Can you hear conversations, relaxing music (or even live music!), laughing? Or is it quiet in a way that feels empty rather than calm? A great care home should be peaceful in places, but also sound like a place alive with bustle and chatter. It should sound like somewhere you actually want to spend time in.

Be sensitive to scent. Does it smell bad? Blunt, perhaps, but it is still the oldest cliché about care. A well-run care home does not make your nose wrinkle, nor is it overly scented with cleaning products, or air fresheners. There should be aromas that make you relax: fresh coffee, baking, lunch being cooked, maybe flowers through an open door. A home looked after reflects residents being cared for.

2. Read the rooms

Think of the spaces in a care home as its values and ethos made visible. So, walk through them slowly and look for what they are telling you. Pay attention to dining rooms and communal eating and drinking spaces. These are the most important areas in a care home. Sit down if you can, even for five minutes. Look at the tables, the settings. Are they properly laid with real crockery and glassware? Are there flowers in vases? Is there a daily menu? Does it reflect the seasons? Can you imagine eating here?

The best care homes treat dining as a centrepiece to the day. They have chefs who bake fresh pastries and cakes each morning and cook dishes from scratch with seasonal, locally sourced ingredients. Some have bistros that feel far closer to a neighbourhood restaurant than a dining hall; these are the kinds of room where people frequently stay after the plates are cleared because they are enjoying the company and post-dinner coffee. Or want a hand of cards with friends over a last glass of wine.

Also notice where the dining spaces sit in the building. At Berkley, we put our bistros right at the entrance so that they are the first thing you see when you walk in. And there is a reason for this: a room flooded with natural light, where someone is playing jazz on the piano, where artisan coffee is being turned into cappuccinos by the baristas and generations of a family sit together, shows you something. This is a place people want to congregate. And not just residents, but their loved ones too, dropping in for a cocktail or gin and tonic after work. The atmosphere of any home is not an accident; it is a decision, and the homes that put their most sociable, lively living space front and centre know it is not about creating somewhere to be looked after, but somewhere to enjoy living in.

Ask to see a bedroom.

Not a show suite, but a real bedroom, if a resident is happy for you to look. Of course, it should be spotless, warm, well-maintained. But what you are really looking for are the personal touches. Are there photographs on the shelves? A favourite painting brought from home? A bag of someone’s preferred sweets on the bedside table? A blanket they have had for years? At Berkley, every room is arranged around the resident who lives in it, their belongings, their furniture if they want it, their things exactly where they like them. A bedroom should feel like theirs, not ours.

Check out the gardens.

Outdoor spaces tell you whether a home thinks about the experience beyond the building. Great care provides variety: raised beds, trees, seating arranged for both conversation and solitude, paths that loop rather than ending. Look for the signs that residents are involved: allotment areas where people grow vegetables and herbs for the kitchen, flower borders that someone has planted themselves. Ask whether the gardeners work alongside residents. Not just maintaining grounds, but helping those who want to get their hands in the soil. Is there outdoor seating where people can have lunch in the sun? A terrace or outdoor bar for summer evenings? Sculpture or art in the landscape? A garden that has been thought about can reveal how residents spend their days.

Search out the living spaces.

The salon. The treatment rooms. A library with proper armchairs and good reading lamps. These are not luxuries but signs that a home understands something fundamental: quality care is not just about medical care. It is about still being able to get your hair done on a Thursday morning, having a quiet hour with a book when you feel like it, doing yoga and stretches. The presence of these spaces tells you how seriously a home takes these crucial parts of later life.

Visit the screening room or cinema.

Ask what gets shown, and when. Is there a programme? The best homes screen classic films, live sport events, documentaries, concerts. A sunny afternoon watching Wimbledon with a gin and tonic is part of what makes a life worth living, at any age.

Ask to see the weekly planner.

There should be a board somewhere that shows a visible programme of what is happening, and when. Look at it carefully. Keep notes of the activities: art classes, music sessions, outings, talks, exercise groups, visits from local schools. Is there genuine variety or does the same handful of activities repeat on a loop? A good planner tells you that someone is thinking creatively about how residents spend their time.

And ask about life beyond the home.

Do residents go out? Are there trips to the theatre, to a garden centre, to museums, to visit other homes? Does the care home have its own transport, like a chauffeur service, and a way of making sure that life does not stop at the front door? At Berkley, our residents visit restaurants, go swimming, attend concerts, go shopping, take day trips to see family. The world outside is still very much their world and the home’s job is to make sure it stays that way.

3. The importance of the menu

Always ask to see a menu.

Then ask who writes it. In the best care homes, the answer involves the residents themselves. A good kitchen is one where people’s preferences, memories and habits shape what gets cooked for them and where the chefs have impressive CVs that make you look forward to every mealtime. That single detail can tell you more than any brochure about quality and ethos.

Ask how residents are involved in the dishes and dining?

From baking in the mornings and collaborations with local producers, to dietary needs and how they are handled, ask the team. A good home will love to talk about what they offer. At Berkley, our kitchens are led by restaurant-trained chefs who write seasonal menus around fresh, local produce. It’s also policy that they meet with residents and families when they arrive to understand their needs, build specific meal plans around the person, and learn their favourite dishes and special occasion recipes to recreate. More than this, we know our residents to be hands on. That’s why we pioneered a collaboration with Sky Wave Gin, a local artisan gin maker, which saw residents help to create Berkley’s own, bespoke house gin, Golden Hour.

4. Observe the care teams at work

You will not learn everything about the care team from a single visit, but you can learn more than you think. Notice whether anyone acknowledges you. Not just the person on reception or giving the tour, but anyone who passes you in the corridor. A home where every member of the team makes eye contact, smiles, says hello, is a home whose culture starts at the top.

How do they talk to residents?

Are they at eye level? Do they use first names? Do they speak to the resident directly? Because, small as it sounds, that can be the difference between a person being seen.

Watch how they move.

A team that is calm, unhurried and quietly confident is a team that is properly supported and well led. A team that is rushing, that looks harried, that cannot stop to answer your question; well, that is worth knowing too.

Watch for the small things.

Does someone know which resident prefers the window table? Who takes two sugars? Whose granddaughter has a recital on Saturday? The relationship between a resident and their care team is one of the most important factors in their happiness. So, feel free to ask directly: how are staff trained? What does the home do to look after the people who look after everyone else?

At Berkley, we think about this a lot. Every resident has what we call an ‘About Me’ profile, a detailed portrait of their life, built with them and their family, that shapes everything from how their room is arranged to what appears beside their breakfast. It means that when any new member of our care teams arrives, they never start from scratch. They start from understanding.

5. Quick-fire questions before you leave

Most families arrive with some version of the same round-up questions: how much does it cost, what care levels are available, is there a room free? These matter and should be asked. But here are some quick-fire questions to tease out the kind of home you are considering.

How do you get to know a new resident before they move in?

The answer should describe a careful, detailed process, not a form. Good homes learn about someone’s history, preferences, routines and relationships before they arrive, and use that knowledge to make the transition as gentle as possible.

What happens when someone has a bad day?

Every home will tell you about the good days. The answer to this question tells you about emotional intelligence and about whether the home sees a difficult afternoon as a problem to be managed or a human reality to be met with patience and care.

Can we speak to some of the families of current residents?

A home that is confident in its care will say yes without hesitation.

What is included in the fees, and what is not?

This one sounds financial, but it is about philosophy. A home that operates on an all-inclusive basis, like Berkley, where everything from the hairdresser to the gin and tonic is simply part of daily life, not an extra on a bill, is telling you something important about how a home sees its residents. Not as a customer to leverage, but as a person who deserves everything as part of their experience. Greater living as part of later living.

6. How do you know when it’s ‘The One’?

People who have found the right care home describe a particular moment. It is not always rational. It does not always correspond to the longest checklist or the highest CQC rating. It is the moment when the anxiety that brought you through the door begins to ease. What you are looking for, underneath all the questions and the practicalities, is a place where life continues. Where care never feels like a concession but entering a new phase of life filled with opportunities.

That is a high bar, but it exists. And when you find it, you will know.

Book a tour of our homes and let us show you what care reimagined looks like.