Nevin House

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.

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 use appropriate language to describe people. However, we saw overall staff spoke kindly about the people they cared for and knew them well including their likes and dislikes. Staff were given time to get to know people when they started working at Nevin House and care plans included information for staff about the things people did and did not like to do, and how to best communicate with people. Staff practice was not always well considered and dignified. For example, we tried to speak with a person who used the service, a staff member immediately intervened and told us, ‘[Person] does not communicate by speaking’ and proceeded to talk for the person which took away that person’s dignity or ability to try and communicate via gesture, facial expression or body language.

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. Staff were able to tell us about people’s needs and abilities explaining their role in supporting people. However, when asked about people, most staff referred to people’s ‘challenging behaviour’ overlooking people’s individual skills and abilities. Care plans contained information about people’s cultural and religious needs. However, people’s communication needs were not consistently met to enable them to engage in their care, treatment and support to maximise their experience and outcomes.There was further information required in care plans relating to people’s goals and aspirations.

The provider did not promote people’s independence, as people did not always know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing. Staff were not always clear staff on how to promote people’s individual choice so they had control in decision making. For example, if a person wanted to go to the cinema another person from the service would have to join them as there was not always sufficient staff to support the other person to remain at the service. Some care plans were written in a way which did not promote people’s choice and staff did not always have a flexible approach to supporting people during periods of increased distress. For example, staff told us “Staff tell [person] to go to bed now and rest”. This was not a person led approach.

The provider listened to and understood people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff responded to people’s needs in the moment and acted to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress. The interim manager took immediate action to ensure that staff had training in supporting people with learning disabilities and autistic people to further develop staff’ awareness when communicating with the people who lived at Nevin House. Staff were able to give us examples of when they have responded to urgent need for help and informed us they felt the interim manager was responsive during these times.

The provider did not always promote the wellbeing of their staff. For example, some staff had not had a supervision meeting for 6 months prior to the inspection. Staff told us that they felt the manager was ‘friendly’ and another told us the company is a ‘good organisation to work for’. However, the rest space for staff to take breaks was cluttered with building materials and products that were harmful to health. Whilst staff were not concerned about this, this did not promote their wellbeing. Staff told us the interim Manager was not always on-site, but staff could call him if they need them and they were responsive to this.