Hillbeck Residential 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 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 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 their relatives spoke of the positive impact that the service and individual staff members had made on their lives and told us that all interactions were delivered with care and compassion. One relative told us “(Staff member) is one of my relative’s favourites, she goes the extra mile a lot of the time, gives her a bath, puts cream on, does her nails and hair, mum says she feels like the Queen of England after. She makes my relative feel so happy, they are all like that.” Another relative added, “From the first visit, I was absolutely amazed at how caring they are here.”

We observed that staff spoke to people with kindness, were patient and knew them very well. They had time to spend with people and regularly checked on their welfare and supported them to take part in a wide range of varied activities.

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.

People were not always supported by practices which promoted their choice and individuality, for example there was staggered mealtime in place where people who needed support with eating would do so at one time and those who could do so independently ate at another time. This wasn’t dignified as it didn’t promote the ability of people to share a meal with their peers if they wished. However, once raised, the provider was proactive and trialled a shared mealtime immediately on the day of the inspection.

People were supported in other areas of their care to explore the things that were meaningful to them such as continuing to follow their religion. A local church visited monthly to deliver a communal service, as well as one to one visits for people who valued individual time to discuss their faith. There were also dedicated services held to mark occasions such as Christmas and Easter.

The provider did not always promote people’s independence, so people did not always know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

People were not always supported to be independent as some practices within the service did not promote that. Improvements were needed around restrictions on people were made such as locked or guarded doors to ensure they promoted people to have independence. However, other areas of practice did promote independence, for example, people had a varied choice of meals which they spoke of positively. If people wished to spend time to themselves such as staying in their room this was respected. There was guidance in place to record people’s individual preferences around tasks such as personal care, with people encouraged to have control over this to promote their dignity and independence.

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 observed that staff were responsive to people’s needs, and where people used their call bell to request assistance or there were instances of distress these were responded to promptly. Staff were knowledgeable about each person and had clear guidance about the care they required to ensure their safety. People and relatives expressed staff were good at responding to people’s needs with one relative telling us, “If any residents get distressed or upset, staff are remedying it straight away.”

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

Staff told us they felt supported and enjoyed working at Hillbeck. There were regular systems to check on staff welfare in surveys, supervisions and team meetings where they could raise any concerns and suggestions. Working patterns were safe and staff were able to take days off when required. Leaders were creative in how they promoted staff welfare. One staff member told us, “A couple of weeks ago we had a therapist come in and we can spend 15 minutes and go and have a treatment or coffee. That was really nice. It was something that was never done before.” Another staff member added, ”I’m happy here now and it’s a happy home. It’s much improved, I have good relationship with people. The new managers have really turned things around.”