Kingswood House

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. This is the first assessment for this service. This key question has been rated requires improvement. This meant people did not always feel well-supported, cared for or treated with dignity and respect.

This service scored 45 (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 treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion, or respect their privacy and dignity. Some positive interactions were observed between people and staff, and individually staff appeared to be caring. However, people and relatives gave mixed feedback regarding staff approach which indicated inconsistencies in the level of care delivered. People told us, “Sometimes I like the staff.” and, “The staff don’t listen, I don’t like it.” Relatives told us, “I feel a lot of the staff are caring.” and, “Staff approach has embarrassed [relative]. [Relative] told us they don’t feel like they are treated like a human being.”

The provider did not treat people as individuals or make sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. The provider did not take account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics. The provider employed practices which were service led and did not provide any recognisable benefit to people at the service. For example, all staff within the service rotated on a 2 hourly time window to support a different person in the service. This practice, whilst manageable for some people, was detrimental to others. People and their relatives expressed concern about this practice and the impact it had on them. A relative told us, “[Relative] is anxious every time we go as to which staff are going to be supporting them, there’s so many changes, it creates anxiety.” The service had a set menu and mealtimes in place. People told us they did not like this and would prefer a different approach. People told us, “Menus are not tailored to what we like,” and, “There is loads of rice and jacket potatoes on the menu, and I don’t like salad.” While some efforts had been made to support people to have more choice in this area and support people to cook, this was not offered consistently as a choice to people at the service.

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 had access to activities and were supported to partake in community activities. However, some people were negatively affected by restrictive practices at the service. For example, a staff rotation system in place impacted on people’s ability to leave the service with support at a time of their choosing. A relative told us of an experience where they were going on a planned outing from the service with their family member but were held up because there was confusion in the staff team about who had been put on the rota to support with this. This created a delay and caused the person anxiety.

The provider did not always listen to and understand people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff did not always respond to people’s needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress. We could not be assured that staff had the correct knowledge and skills to meet people’s needs. The provider was asked to undertake immediate actions to ensure staff had the right training and support to meet specific health needs. Whilst this work was undertaken quickly there were still some deficiencies with the level of knowledge and understanding of peoples care needs. Feedback from staff about the care needs of people at the service lacked detail and did not reflect what was recorded in people’s plans of care. Some assessments were missing from people’s care plans so we could not be assured people were receiving an optimal level of support.

The provider did not always promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care. Feedback from staff was mixed in relation to how supported they felt at the service. Some staff told us there was a supportive culture at the service, however some staff also told us they did not feel supported and did not feel able to speak up about concerns. The provider had not ensured all staff had the correct knowledge, skills and support needed to provide high quality care to all people at the service.