THE first residents have moved into a £10million care home set to “revolutionise” care provision across Dumbarton and the Vale.

The state-of the-art Dumbarton Care Home, which sits on the former site of Crosslet House, in Argyll Avenue, was unveiled last week, and staff have already begun welcoming the first residents from the Willox Park Home, Dalreoch House and Langcraigs homes into their new surroundings.

The closures are part of a wider review of care home provision, with sites built in the 1960s no longer able to provide the type of care required, either due to location, size or configuration.

The project has been more than five years in the making and involves merging six care homes in total locally, and in turn, building two state-of-the-art ones in an investment of around £22m.

The other care home planned for West Dunbartonshire is being earmarked for Queens Quay, Clydebank.

But with the new Dumbarton Care Home, they are expecting around 70 residential patients, with day care patients expected to swell the numbers in the weeks and months to come.

The facilities are expected to be fully operational by July 7.

The Reporter was last week given a sneak preview of what patrons can expect and everything is in place.

It boasts its own cinema room, activities area, lounges, external housing and flats.

It even boasts a hairdressing salon.

And painstaking detail has been carried out during the design phase, to conform to Care Inspectorate requirements.

Phil MacDonald, integrated operations manager, care home development, said: “Crosslet House is somewhere you come to live the next chapter of your life.

“This project has been exceptionally hard work and a learning curve but we believe we have the right facilities in place to care for our elderly patients for the next 20 to 30 years.

“There’s garden space for outdoor activities and everything has been designed with flexibility in mind, and there are also areas where people can take part in gardening projects, which is linked in with our care service provision.

“The building is set-up to be as flexible and as user friendly as possible.

“There are high-tech sensors which record when members of staff come in and out of residents’ rooms.

“In this day and age residents want and need different things. We’ve even got an internet room for them to Skype their families overseas.

“Basically we are thinking about the next generation of older people and we are looking at 25 to 30 years in the future.

“A massive amount of consideration has gone into the design of the facility.

“Even the colour scheme is designed in such a way to assist residents, for instance, someone suffering with dementia.

“We have Red, Green, Yellow and Purple rooms and these have been shown to help steer people with the condition.”

They held a recent open day for nearby residents which was a resounding success, as Phil explained: “The community wanted to find out about our story and why we are here.

“They have been really supportive and it’s all about working with them because this place has been under construction for some time.”

Crosslet House was originally built as a home for a sheriff but lay unused for years.

It changed from a private home into a children’s home around 65 years ago but the home closed in the 70s.

It was then used as council offices and latterly a nursery before closing its doors for good in 2013.