Westwood House

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

Effective – this means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence. At our last inspection we rated this key question outstanding. At this inspection the rating has changed to good. This meant people’s outcomes were consistently good, and people’s feedback confirmed this.

This service scored 71 (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 made sure people’s care and treatment was effective by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them. The provider had a clear process to assess people’s needs before they moved into the service.

The operations manager told us they gathered information about people’s background, personal details, medication, behaviours, likes and dislikes. They told us they involved a behaviour specialist if needed. They also told us, “If we feel we need to meet people beforehand, we would invite them to the service, some will want to come to service but some people may not.”

However, one staff member told us they felt the provider had not fully assessed a person’s needs before they had moved to the service. The operations manager explained this person’s needs had changed over time and other staff also supported this statement.

The provider planned and delivered people’s care and treatment with them, including what was important and mattered to them. They did this in line with legislation and current evidence-based good practice and standards. The provider used widely recognised evidence-based tools to assess whether people had any risks, such as the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) to assess whether a person was at risk of malnutrition, and the Waterlow score to assess whether a person was at risk of pressure injury. The information from these assessments was transferred to people’s support plans with information about how to manage these risks. The provider facilitated visits for people to support important relationships.

The provider worked well across teams and services to support people. They made sure people only needed to tell their story once by sharing their assessment of needs when people moved between different services. Staff told us they worked well together, and we observed staff supporting each other during our site visit. The operations manager told us meetings took place regularly and we saw evidence of these. The service worked well with other services, and we saw evidence of regular appointments taking place with outside professionals. People and their relatives also supported this feedback.

The provider supported people to live healthier lives. The service’s menu contributed to a healthy and well-balanced diet. We saw evidence of the provider working with a person to improve their health and well-being. People were supported to access health services appropriate to their needs.

The provider routinely monitored people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it. They ensured outcomes for people were positive and consistent, and that they met both clinical expectations and the expectations of people themselves. For example, people were weighed on a monthly basis so any significant changes to people’s weight could be responded to appropriately.

Although staff had received training in the Mental Capacity Act, and understood the principles of these, the provider did not always tell people about their rights around consent and did not always respect these when delivering person-centred care and treatment. The provider did not always follow the requirements of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) and best interest checklist. They did not always involve the relevant people, for example, health professionals or relatives in best interest decisions about their care. This meant decisions for people may have been made which were not in their best interest.