Alice House

Updated 2 September 2025

Date of Assessment: 17 September to 23 September 2025.

Alice House is a care home which provides care to older people with dementia. The assessment included 2 visits to the service by 2 inspectors. An Expert by Experience supported with the first visit. An Expert by Experience is a person who has personal experience of using or caring for someone who uses this type of care service.

At our assessment 20 September 2024 to 7 October 2024, we rated the service inadequate overall and in the key questions safe and well led. There were 7 breaches of the legal regulations in relation to safe care and treatment, staffing, recruitment, medicines optimisation and good governance. We served 2 warning notices in relation to safeguarding and good governance. The service was placed into special measures. The purpose of special measures is to ensure that services providing inadequate care make significant improvements. Special measures provide a framework within which we use our enforcement powers in response to inadequate care and provide a timeframe within which providers must improve the quality of the care they provide. We conducted an assessment 25 March to 7 April 2025 to follow up on the 2 warning notices, to check improvements had been made. We found at that assessment, the warning notices had been met, and improvements had been made. We did not follow up on the other breaches of regulation identified at the last assessment. The scores for the quality statements we did not assess, remained unchanged, as further work was needed to develop and embed new governance processes.

At this assessment we looked at all 33 quality statements and provided the service with a new overall rating. We found improvements had been made, with governance systems embedded and the overall provider oversight significantly improved. The provider was no longer in breach of regulations with all 7 breaches met. The service is no longer in special measures. For the past year, the provider had worked closely with a care consultancy and the local authority to implement new governance systems. The operations director informed us they were parting ways with the consultancy company now that improvements had been made and sustained. The registered manager continued to be in post; however, they had resigned and were due to leave. Plans were in place to recruit a new registered manager with cover arrangements in place.

The provider and registered manager had good oversight of the service and continued to conduct audits, with continued improvements made to the governance systems. Lessons had been learnt relating to the previous failures. The staff team spoke positively of the changes made, along with professional feedback being positive. The service had a service improvement plan in place and continued to identify any shortfalls, with actions put into place to address this.

The atmosphere in the home was much calmer with the staff team feeling supported. At the time of are assessment 23 people were living at the home.

Updated 2 September 2025

We gained feedback from people and their relatives and spent time observing how the staff interacted with people. We spoke with 8 people and 4 relatives. The people we spoke with, were happy to be living at the home and particularly spoke about the kindness of the staff.

Some relatives told us that overall things had improved, including communication since the new registered manager had been in post. They confirmed they were contacted if their family member had a fall, injury, or were visited by a health professional. One relative told us, “Things are better, and I do get phone calls. I always speak to the staff or the manager when I pop in to check things are ok.”

Some people were able to tell us about their medicines and how these were administered promptly and safely. One person told us, “They do my medication, they are very regular, and they order it.They wait while I have it.” Whilst speaking to the person we observed a staff member, entered their room, and assisted the person by given them their tablets one by one. The staff were patient and gentle.

People were encouraged to have meals in the dining room so they could socialise with others. However, this was down to personal choice. People were offered a selection of food and drinks during the day and the feedback we received was positive. We received the following feedback, “I sometimes go down for breakfast or have it in my room. I get a choice of food and tend not to want much in the evening,” “The food is nice but sometimes it could be hotter. I am always offered a coffee when it comes round, and they give biscuits.”

People are their relatives felt the staff were caring, kind and attentive. They told us, “The staff are very good, they do what I used to be able to do for myself”, “The staff are so kind”, “They are always gentle, couldn’t be nicer, they are busy, but they have a bit of a chat”, “The staff are lovely and patient.”

We observed people were encouraged to take part in daily activities. On the first day of our visit, we observed a singer in the lounge, who visited weekly. Whilst the singer was setting up, the staff started a game of skittles with people throwing the ball either standing or from their chairs and they were clearly enjoying this. We spoke with people and relatives about the activities provided. They told us, “I watch some things on TV, I read a lot and do word searches, my family bring me books,” “I know the staff encourage my relative to attend activities and entertainment. I have seen photos of them having fun,” “I would like someone to take me out for an hour or two for a walk. We go out in the garden in the summer they had the umbrellas up.They had a garden party with cakes and a bar.”