Archived: Lowther Road

Most of the people who live at Lowther Road had communication difficulties which made it difficult for us to understand their views about the care they received. Therefore, we needed to observe people who live in the home and their interactions with staff to see what their experience was like.

We found that people who lived in the home were treated with respect and given choices about what they wanted to do. People were supported to engage in various activities and access their community. The records we looked at showed how people had been involved in making decisions about their lives. We saw evidence of the home communicating with relatives of people who used the service and health and social care professionals to ensure that individuals' needs were met.

There were enough staff on duty on both days of our inspection to meet individuals' personal care needs and ensure they could participate in activities.

People who lived in the home had access to their bedrooms at all times and could access all communal areas of the home as they wished. The home provided a suitable environment for people to live in.

Although there was evidence of progress being made since our inspections of the home in 2011, there were still some areas which required further improvement to be fully compliant with the regulations. As a result of our inspection we have made three compliance actions in relation to management of medicines, complaints and the registration of a manager. We have also made four improvement actions in relation to care and welfare, staff recruitment, supporting workers and quality assurance procedures where action needs to be taken for compliance to be maintained.

We did a planned review of the home in March 2011 when we looked at all sixteen of the essential standards of quality and safety. As part of this review we contacted relatives of people who use the service to obtain their views about the home. We included their views in our report.

The purpose of this responsive review was to follow up on the progress the service has made in meeting some of the compliance actions we made at our last review. We did not speak directly to people who use the service, or their relatives, about their views on this occasion.

We talked to some relatives of people who use the service. They gave us mixed feedback about their experiences. Some of the comments we received were positive and we were told by some people that their family members were settled and happy in the home and they felt their needs were largely met. We heard that people liked the home environment and felt it was homely, clean and comfortable. Other comments indicated that there were areas for improvement in the home. Some relatives felt that the home could communicate more effectively with them. People told us that although in many ways their family member's care needs were met there were some gaps where they felt physical health issues could be missed and needs not met. People were not always confident that the training offered to care workers was of a sufficient standard for them to be able to respond to individuals' needs and one person indicated that some staff had not understood the manager on-call system when this was required.

People had varied experiences about raising concerns about the service. Some people told us that when they had contacted Solor Care's Head Office with their concerns they were satisfied with the response they received. Other people were not always clear about how their concerns were dealt with when they raised them directly with the home and some feedback indicated that people felt they were seen as 'difficult' when they expressed their views.