Leighton Forest

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 service. This key question has been rated requires improvement. This meant the effectiveness of people’s care, treatment and support did not always achieve good outcomes or was inconsistent.
 

This service scored 58 (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 did not always make sure people’s assessed care and treatment needs were reviewed effectively. Although people’s needs had been initially assessed and initial care plans were in place for when people started using the service, these had not always been reviewed effectively. For example, we found care plans did not always reflect changes in people’s mobility, activities and pastimes they liked and how best for staff to support people with risks they could experience. This increased the risk of staff not knowing how to meet people’s needs and preferences, especially if they were unfamiliar with the person. However, the staff we spoke with were knowledgeable about people’s needs. A staff member told us, “We speak with people when they are admitted, and staff ask about their likes and dislikes, so we know what they want.”

Improvements were needed in how the provider evidenced people’s needs had been met in areas such as receiving their prescribed medicines, support with emotional distress, mobility and when they declined care. Not ensuring records in these areas were always of a good standard increased the risk of the provider being unable to evaluate how effective the care people received was.

However, we also found good evidence-based care and treatment in areas such as supporting people to reposition to prevent pressure sores, managing risks relating to people’s weight and regular wellbeing checks for people who could not use a call bell or call for help.
 

The service worked well with relatives and external health professionals such as community nurses, mental health services, and social workers. A relative told us, “I was worried about [Relative’s] low mood, and they have let the GP know to see if some medication would help with that.”

People received appropriate support to manage their health in areas such as receiving fortified foods and having access to external health professionals where required. People also had access to and participated in exercise-based activities such as armchair exercises and yoga. The service had robotic sensory pets, and people used them. Robotic Sensory Pets can provide therapeutic benefits to people by providing comfort and companionship; research has found these to be beneficial to people living with dementia.

Our findings in relation to medicines, how risks were managed and safeguarding meant we could not be assured the service always effectively reviewed and monitored people’s care to always ensure consistent positive outcomes.

However, we also found evidence of people experiencing positive outcomes. For example, where a person had been medically assessed as being at their end of their life due to deteriorating health, their condition had improved since moving to Leighton Forest. This meant they could now spend less time being cared for in bed and more time participating in communal activities and being outdoors. A relative said, “[Relative] lost a lot of weight in hospital [they] went down to (amount of weight they were). Since [Relative] has been in the care home, [they] have gone up to (amount they now weigh). The chef said they would cook anything [Relative] wanted.”
 

Where the service had determined people could not consent or make specific decisions, such as those relating to receiving help with their hygiene, this had not always been done in line with the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) 2005 code of practice to include enough detail about how their capacity had been assessed. This need for improvement was known to the provider, as the provider was completing actions and learning from a recent inspection at another one of their services.

However, staff understood what consent meant, and we observed staff seeking consent before delivering care to people. A person told us, “Carers are wonderful people I depend on; I like, no, I actually love them all because they help me every time I ask them to do something for me. Most of the time, they have better options and offer me a choice, and I respect that. We do have disagreements in opinions of what is better for me, but they respect my wishes, and I always win. I am well looked after.”