Selwood House Care Home

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.

This is the first assessment for this newly registered service. This key question has been rated 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.
 

Detailed pre-admission assessments were completed and from these full assessments and care plans were developed. Information from pre-assessments was vital to the first few days of care delivery at the service and on one occasion, information had not been noted by the care team and a person did not receive appropriate care. This was an isolated incident, and information was handed over thoroughly on previous occasions and appropriate care delivered as a result.

Care plans reflected people’s needs whilst respecting individual wishes. Care plans were reviewed regularly and when there were changes to people’s needs, updated. Changes were communicated through staff handover and meetings and on eCare handsets.

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.

Care was planned and delivered in line with current best practice. For example, people were weighed regularly and their malnutrition universal screening tool (MUST) scores calculated to ascertain if they needed nutritional support. Concerns about choking and swallowing were referred to the speech and language team (SALT). Other assessments and plans were in place regarding for example, skin integrity and falls.

The registered manager was a registered nurse though currently working in a residential setting. They used their clinical and care expertise, along with good practice standards to develop learning sessions for staff. These took place most months and help staff develop their practice.

The provider did not always work well across teams and services to support people. They did not always share their assessment of people’s needs when people moved between different services.

We received mixed feedback from a health and social care professionals who described some problems with the working relationship. For example, there were frequent times when two different healthcare services had the same people referred meaning they both reviewed them thus taking additional time that was not necessary and meaning 2 different healthcare professionals attended the service to see them. One person had the same personal examination by 2 different professionals as they were mistakenly referred to both. In addition, lists of people for review could be late in arriving with healthcare professionals.

There was positive feedback about improvements made by the registered manager since commencing in post. They had mostly improved accuracy in referrals and had been able to provide staff to accompany when healthcare professionals met with people. Unfortunately, this was still not embedded into regular practice as recently people living with dementia had not been supported and the reasons for requesting an appointment were unclear making a diagnostic examination difficult.
Feedback from healthcare professionals also said that they did not receive appropriate support from staff at Selwood House. This was not due to being treated badly by staff but because there were not always staff available to support them. Feedback about staff was positive.

We spoke with the registered manager about this, and they intended to meet with healthcare professionals to improve support and facilitate a more positive relationship. However, they had not been made aware of the difficulties experienced.

The provider supported people to manage their health and wellbeing to maximise their independence, choice and control. Staff supported people to live healthier lives and where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support.

Referrals were made to appropriate healthcare professionals and the local frailty team completed regular ‘ward rounds’.
Staff had completed training in many different health conditions including epilepsy, dementia and diabetes. This, along with care plans, gave insight into what signs and symptoms people may show if they are becoming unwell.

The provider routinely monitored people’s care and treatment to continuously improve it. They ensured that outcomes were positive and consistent, and that they met both clinical expectations and the expectations of people themselves.

Monitoring took place, when needed, of areas such as urine output, fluids taken, and bowels opening. These were used to maintain people’s health, for example, administering laxatives if monitoring indicated this necessary.

The eCare system meant records from all aspects of care delivered could be generated to enable up to date monitoring to inform care delivery and provide a more positive experience and outcomes for people.

The provider told people about their rights around consent and respected these when delivering person-centred care and treatment.

People’s rights were respected and whenever possible, choices were offered about things such as clothing, whether to bathe, and meals.

Staff completed training in the MCA and understood they should ask people to consent before providing them with care and offer day-to-day choices.

People can only be deprived of their liberty to receive care and treatment when this is in their best interests and legally authorised under the MCA. In care homes, this is usually through MCA application procedures called the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). Appropriate applications had been made to deprive people of their liberty and reapplications were submitted as needed.