Quarry Mount

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 changed to requires improvement. This meant people were not always supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to person-centred care.

This service scored 60 (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 always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

People told us staff were kind and caring. Comments included, “The staff are very nice” and “The girls are lovely”. We observed staff speaking kindly and compassionately to people. One relative commented, “All the team members are caring, thoughtful and understanding even when I feel that I can't cope they have been there for myself.” We observed staff supporting people in a kind and caring way.

The provider did not always treat people as individuals or make sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They did not always take account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

People’s social needs were not always met. For example, some people told us they felt activities had reduced following a change in provider. One person commented, “They used to have singing once a week. The music was stimulating for the people in the other lounge. They have taken the stimulation away”. During our site visits, we observed limited activities taking place. We raised this with leaders who said they would reintroduce some activities.

However, people had ‘about me’ documents in their rooms which contained key information about their likes, interests and things which were important to them. There was an activities coordinator who organised in-house activities for people as they were trained to deliver some activity sessions. This included singing for the brain and musical bingo. The activities coordinator also ran intergenerational activities including visits from the local nursery, and supported people to attend the church.There was also an activity timetable which included a range of in-house activities as well as some external activities.

The provider did not always promote people’s independence, so people did not always know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

Some people told us choices for their evening meal were limited and we reviewed multiple daily notes where people received the same meals. One relative commented, “[People] don't get offered a choice of tea or coffee or chocolate, they bring drinks down pre-prepared. Everyone has sandwiches and a piece of cake for tea; there is no choice at all. The menu board says salad and jacket potato are choices for tea and this is not offered.” We raised this with leaders for them to address.

One person’s care plan stated the decline in their mobility stopped them from getting out as much as they would like. However, there was no evidence of staff supporting the person to access the community using mobility aids. The person’s daily records demonstrated care and support were task led for this person.

However, people’s care plans contained information about what people could do to support themselves which helped promote independence. Staff told us they promoted choice and independence, for example during personal care. One person was encouraged to manage their own health appointments which promoted their independence.People were offered choices at lunchtime.

The provider did not always listen to and understand people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff did not always respond to people’s needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

Staffing levels meant people’s needs were not always met. We observed a person calling out for staff support, however there was only 1 staff member between 9 people and the staff member was supporting another person. This led to the person becoming distressed. During our first site visit, we observed call bells sounding for a period of 12 minutes before it was answered.

However, leaders told us they completed call bell monitoring to see how long staff took to respond to call bells. The manager said, “We have recently changed over to a different call bell system, the information is now coming through on a handset and we can complete reports, we will be looking at trends by the end of the year.”

The provider cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

Staff told us they felt supported. However, we reviewed a recent staff survey which showed repeated comments about their workload and pressures within the team. The manager said they were looking into arranging a ‘wellbeing line’ for staff to speak with someone external to support their wellbeing.