1. guiding principles was to be a world-class
employer, running a world-class facility with
world-class quality of care and we won’t achieve
that unless we have the best possible staff, so
we need to pay them well and their financial
remuneration is very good for Sri Lanka.
“ In the UK, care homes have, in a lot of cases,
just become a numbers business. We could
quite easily provide a similar
quality of care with a ratio of one
to five, but we took a conscious
decision to have such a high
ratio, especially at the beginning,
because we wanted to make sure
that we are the best care
provider in Sri Lanka. Our drivers
haven’t been financial gain,
certainly not in the short term –
we want to set a bench mark for
others on the island to aspire to
and work with government. We
are looking to do some really
good things in Sri Lanka but we
want to do them for the right reasons; it’s not
purely for profit.”
Jeff Wicks said Cinnamon Care was currently
in discussions with the CQC to investigate
options to broaden the regulator’s remit to
cover international facilities as this would
provide a certain degree of confidence to Brits
considering international retirement with care.
“There is not the same level of regulatory
audit as there is the UK,” he said.
“My mother would like to get more involved
with the Sri Lankan Government to try and
establish something like the Care Quality
Commission in England. In the meantime, we
are trying to speak to the CQC to see if there
is scope for them to cover 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.”
■ For more information, go to:
www.cinnamoncare.com
CT
news
March 2015 www.careinfo.org18
A little over two years ago, Cinnamon Care
Services opened its first care home in Sri
Lanka as an overseas offering to self-paying
residents in the UK, the United States and to
older people in Sri Lanka itself.
With fees of less than a third of what it
costs to live in a high-end care home in the
UK, a staff/resident ratio of 1:1.5 and a sun-
drenched Shangri La setting, Cinnamon Care
managing director Jeff Wicks believes
Cinnamon Grove, 45 minutes from Colombo,
is a compelling proposition.
Jeff 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.
“My mother had long held a desire to
establish a UK standard facility in Sri Lanka,”
said Jeff.
“I decided to partner with her and we
purchased the three-acre estate in 2011, built
the facility according to UK specs over two
years and launched in early 2013.”
Cinnamon Grove has 20 double-sized rooms
each capable of being a shared room for
residents or couples who are relatively
independent.
“For residents with more care needs, we
would recommend that they use that space as
a single room,” said Jeff. “We plan to build a
separate 8-10 bedroom dementia wing later
this year.”
Cinnamon Grove will have been open two
years in May and at present has just 16
residents but Jeff feels the momentum is now
beginning to build.
“Generally these things get around by word
of mouth, and this can take some time to
establish” said Jeff. “We are the first to bring
UK standards and procedures to Sri Lanka
and have had a number of articles in local
magazines and press and it’s slowly starting
to gain significant momentum as our high
quality service is becoming known on the
Island. There has been quite a bit more
interest over the last couple of months and
we expect it to fill up pretty quickly now. We
plan to open a second, smaller facility in the
centre of Colombo.
Cinnamon Grove has it’s own one-acre
sensory garden and is growing a range of
organic fruits and vegetables, the residents able
Cinnamon Grove - a UK standard of care
in a Shangri la setting
to join in with gardening, along
with a varied activities
programme.
“Most of our residents are of
Sri Lankan origin, but have
spent a large part of their lives
in the UK, USA, etc. and/or their
children are living abroad and so
understand the concept of high
quality Western care,” said Jeff.
“We also have two non Sri
Lankans, (USA & UK) and have been visited by
other nationalities with a view to retiring with
us. When you consider the Sri Lankan
diaspora around the UK – I think there’s
around a million British Sri Lankans – I’m sure
that facilities like Cinnamon Grove would be of
interest to those people.
“Older people now are often well-travelled
and there is often less dependence on other
family members, but now there is also the
facility for people to maintain regular contact
with friends and family using the internet.
Everyone we’ve spoken to has said we have
timed this perfectly.
A monthly fee of about £1,000 gets a
resident an ensuite double room with a garden
patio, 24-hour care, all meals from the home’s
hotel standard kitchen, laundry, housekeeping
and activities.
“We have a staff to resident ratio of a almost
one-to-one,” said Jeff.
“We’re going to reduce that because we
don’t need it, it will probably settle to about
two-to-one, so each care giver is going to be
looking after a maximum of two residents –
that kind of ratio is absolutely unheard of for
elderly care here in the UK.”
I asked Jeff Wicks if Cinnamon Care was
paying its staff the Sri Lankan equivalent of
the Living Wage.
“Very much so,” he replied. “One of our
Caring Times editor
Geoff Hodgson talks to
JEFF WICKS, co-owner
of a newly-built care
home in Sri Lanka.
Fees of around £1,000 a month put Cinnamon Grove’s tropical
warm within reach of many self-funding elderly people in the UK.