Valley Lodge Care Home

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

This service scored 65 (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.

People and relatives said people were treated kindly by staff whom they felt knew and understood people well. Relatives said staff are, “Always kind and caring, always make time for [person] and listen to what [person] says. Sometimes they give [person] a cuddle” and “[Person’s] not very verbal now and I think [person] struggles to recognise family but [person’s] face lights up when staff come in.”

We saw staff were polite and kind to people. We saw when a health care professional needed to review a person in the lounge, staff used a screen for their dignity. A health care professional confirmed they found staff to be kind and caring to people.

The service treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences.

People and relatives said people were treated as individuals. Relative’s feedback included, “[Staff] understand [person’s] needs well.” “Nothing is too much trouble” and “What I see is staff who recognise [person’s] wishes (to be left on their own) but still seek to engage [person].”

Staff said people’s care plans reflected their choices and preferences and told us they as staff supported people to make choices about their day-to-day care. People’s care plans contained information about them as an individual, who and what was important to them and their communication needs. There was guidance for staff about how to support people in a way which met their needs. We saw people's bedrooms were personalised to reflect their taste.

The service did not always provide sufficient opportunities for stimulation for everyone.

We received mixed feedback about the in-house activities, whilst feedback about the external entertainers was positive. Some people reported there were insufficient activities, particularly at the weekends. We saw there was a lack of social stimulation for some people. We saw activities staff were working on both days. However, we only saw them provide one to one activities and not any group activities. Although staff interacted with people as they supported them with their care and spoke with them as they passed, there was a lack of group activities for people, apart from an external entertainer who visited on the first day.

There were a lack of opportunities for people to engage themselves with activities around the home. People were keen to engage though, as we saw at one point a number of people appeared to be asleep. However, as soon as something happened, such as staff providing drinks, people were immediately responsive.

The provider and the registered manager were both aware of this issue and had taken action. They told us a second activities staff member had just been recruited and were due to start work. This meant additional activities could be provided both during the week and at weekends. The registered manager also told us the service had ample equipment such as ‘fiddle muffs’ for people living with dementia, which they wanted staff to ensure people could access.

Not all staff were sufficiently proactive in responding to people’s needs in the moment.

We saw on day one, partially as people had to eat in the lounge due to staff training. Staff did not all consistently take the initiative and respond quickly to people's needs. Staff did not prompt a person to eat their first mouthful of food as per the instructions in their care plan and their meal went cold and had to be replaced. Staff did not prompt a second person to eat until nearly fifteen minutes after their meal had been served. Staff were seen supporting people more responsively on the second day when the dining room was back in use.

Staff had noted in the daily service audit, that one day in February 2025 there were few staff who had used their initiative to prompt people who did not ask for assistance. On the provider’s survey a relative noted it could take time for people to receive help. As staff were not consistently completing people's records at the time care was provided as per their regular reminders. It was difficult for the provider to be able to demonstrate people had consistently been supported in accordance with their care plan.

However, we also received positive feedback about the responsiveness of staff, from people and relatives. Staff told us, the training on day one had caused ‘disruption’ to people’s care. We saw some staff respond to people’s needs as soon as they became aware of them. We saw staff making adjustments for people's comfort.

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

Staff spoken with during the inspection felt their work was manageable and that the provider supported them well. The timings of trainings had also been altered, in order to better accommodate the needs of night staff.