Orford House Residential Care Home

On this page

• Overview
• Kindness, compassion and dignity
• Treating people as individuals
• Independence, choice and control
• Responding to people’s immediate needs
• Workforce wellbeing and enablement

Caring – this means we looked for evidence that the provider involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect. At our last assessment we rated this key question good. At this assessment the rating has remained good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

This service scored 70 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion, and respected their privacy and dignity.

Staff spoke positively and with kindness about the people they were supporting. However, we found at mealtimes interactions were task focused and not always person centred. For some people there was a lack of distinction between the morning activities and lunchtime, which impacted on people’s experience and orientation, and staff did not always respond in a kind and compassionate way, taking account of people’s non-verbal communication, when meeting the needs of some people that required assistance at mealtimes. The management team told us they would request the provider’s dementia lead to undertake a mapping exercise to support and guide staff about how to improve the mealtime experience.

Despite our observations above, people told us staff were kind and caring, and were respectful of their privacy and dignity. Comments from people included, “[Staff] are very pleasant and pop in and out to see that I am ok,” “You have only to mention you would like something and they get it for you” and “They are conscious of our dignity and that goes along with privacy.”

We did not look at Treating people as individuals during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

The provider promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care and wellbeing. People were involved in their care and staff respected their choices. Staff were aware of people’s mental capacity and what decisions they were able to make. Staff respected people’s decisions to ensure they were empowered and in control of their care. People told us, “[Staff] encourage us to make choices about our whole day” and “[Staff] encourage me to do what I can and let me know if there is anything going on that I would like to join in and I am free to decide.” We observed staff offering people choices throughout the day for example what they would like to eat and what activities they would like to partake in.

Staff supported people to be as independent as possible and enabled them to undertake as much as possible for themselves. A staff member said, “[People’s] independence is their own choice and decision. If they can do things for themselves then we let them do it. We don’t take their independence away from themselves. Help them but don’t take over.” People felt free to do as much as they could for themselves and we observed staff only stepping in to support when people required it. One person said, “I don’t have much need of help, I want to stay as independent as possible, but I when I need them, they are there.”

Friends and family were welcome at the service and there were no restrictions on visiting.

We did not look at Responding to people’s immediate needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.

We did not look at Workforce wellbeing and enablement during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Caring.