Little Acres

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 remained good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

This service scored 75 (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.

Throughout the assessment we saw staff speak and engage with people in a kind, patient and supportive manner and where people enjoyed jokes and banter this was part of how staff communicated with them. We saw documentation which evidenced people were treated respectfully and their dignity was respected.

One staff member told us, “I am always available to listen to the residents and help in any way I can. I like to find out their interests and have a chat about them.”

Relatives supported that staff were caring and treated people with dignity and respect. When asked if staff were kind and respectful one family member said, “Oh, yes, they’re very good in that respect.”

The provider treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Staff listened to people and supported them using their preferred communication style. This enabled people to communicate their choices and preferences which were documented in people’s support plans and well known by staff.

People’s individual goals, aspirations and desires were understood. People’s background, life history, and preferences were respected and documented in support plans to guide staff to provide them with the support they needed in the way the person wanted considering them as an individual and not just the support they required. People were supported to be themselves and we saw people had personalised bedrooms reflecting them as individuals.

The provider promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

People’s choices were documented clearly and their independence was promoted.

Staff understood the importance of supporting people’s independence and using the right method of communication to support the person with making choices and communicating their wishes. One staff member told us about recognising a person who did not look comfortable in their wheelchair and what they did to support, they said, “I sat with [name] using pictorials and we discussed what they would like. I helped them to express that they would like a new wheelchair and put in a referral for this, after attending some appointments [name] has since got a new chair and is now more supported and comfortable, they expressed they were happy with this using vocalisations.”

This meant people were empowered to exercise control over their own care and treatment as far as possible.

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.

We reviewed documentation including accident and incident forms which demonstrated how staff had supported people to get the care and support they needed in that moment. We saw support plans for people who can experience distress behaviours provided staff with guidance on signs that may indicate a concern to support early intervention and minimise distress.

Where people could not communicate verbally, or their verbal communication was limited, we observed interactions between staff and people that demonstrated relationships were caring and compassionate, enabling staff to anticipate and meet people’s needs quickly. We spoke with relatives to ask if they felt staff responded to people’s needs appropriately, for example if people used their emergency call bell to contact staff for support. One relative said, “Yes, as soon as the bell goes off, the staff are there.”

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

The provider had policy in place, for example a flexible working policy to support staff with maintaining their work/home life balance and staff had access to an employee assistance programme. The regional support manager held a monthly wellbeing hub for staff to access. The registered manager told us about the support available to the team, “We have a wellbeing assistance program, [brand] app which supports us and we can utilise that. [Regional support manager] is amazing and even families have accessed that [wellbeing hub] in the past.”

All staff we spoke with said they felt supported by the registered manager and the wider management team. Staff felt able to speak to managers, one staff member said, “The management team are very supportive and are always willing to listen to any concerns or needs I have.” Staff indicated they felt the workforce as a whole were supportive.

Caring for the wellbeing of staff supported with maintaining a consistent and motivated workforce enabled staff to deliver person centred care.