Pilgrims Way Care Home with Nursing

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 did not always feel well-supported, cared for or treated with dignity and respect.

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

This service scored 50 (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 did not always treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion, or respect their privacy and dignity. Staff did not always treat colleagues with kindness and respect.

Feedback from people and their relatives was mixed. Some people told us the staff were very kind and caring. For example, one person told us, “The staff are nice, the food’s good. They help me with washing if I need it, they are very good and kind.” However, another person told us, “Most of the staff act like it’s too much trouble. If they were more friendly it would be better.”

One staff told us, “If that was my granny or grandpa, I would want to treat them with compassion and care. If they’re having a good or bad day, I give them 100%”. During the inspection we did see some nice interactions between staff, managers and people.

However, actions to keep people safe had not been sufficiently prioritised by the provider which was not reflective of a caring culture. We also identified there were times where people could have been spoken to or about in a kinder and more dignified way. For example, staff referred to one person as ‘a feed’ meaning the person needed support to eat their meal.

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.

Most of the staff knew people well and provided people with personalised support. One relative told us, “I think they do know, a couple are very good, and they come in and talk to [my relative] and us, which I find very lovely.” However, some people and relatives told us there were times when they had to wait for a staff member who was assigned to them when other staff appeared available. One relative told us, “The care staff are really lovely, they treat [my relative] with respect and joke with [them]. However, they also told us their relative had to wait to be helped to the toilet and staff had not explained why they had to wait. One person told us they were upset they had not been administered a usual medicine. They told us staff had not explained why this medicine had not been given.

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.

People were offered choices though out the day such as what they wanted to drink and where they wanted to spend their time. Some people spent their time in their room and others chose to engage in activities in the lounge.

Managers told us people were offered the opportunity to suggest activities and plan the menu. However, there had been no recent meetings for people and where one had been planned it had been postponed due to lack of interest. It was not clear how people had been involved in planning either the menu or activities. The activities we observed during the inspection were not those which were on the planner for the day. However, most people seemed to enjoy them. One relative told us, “There are activities in the main communal area, [my relative] doesn’t go down for them, [they] like to be in [their] room. If [they] wanted to, there are always things to do.” Another relative said, “I think they try their best. There was a fete the other day, there was music and a burger van in the garden, [my relative] thoroughly enjoyed that, which was really nice, it lifted [their] spirit because [they were] outside for the day.”

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.

Most people spent their day in the communal areas of the service and staff were there to provide people with support as and when they needed it. However, staff had not always considered how people accessed support and planned around this. We observed one person calling for assistance. The person’s room was down one end of the service, and we needed to fetch staff to provide support. The person was not always able to use their call bell and staff said they sometimes called out for assistance. Staff had not considered if it might be in the person’s best interests to discuss moving them closer to where staff were more likely to hear them call out.

One relative told us, “I don’t feel the call bells are answered that quick, they could probably do better and [my relative] has mentioned it a few times.”

The provider did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

Whilst staff told us they felt supported a recent anonymous staff survey provided a different response. Some staff had fed back that they did not feel valued or respected in their role or supported by their manager. The registered manager told us they were working on getting staff to bring forward concerns to them directly, but this was not yet fully happening. However, the management team did know there were tensions in the staff team, and this needed to be addressed.

Staff told us they were supported to have time off. One staff said, “We do get a break during the day and days off when we need it, we can request this.” Staff told us there were enough staff providing support for people at the service.