The Old School House 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.

This is the first assessment for this re registered service. This key question has been rated good. This meant people’s outcomes were good, and people’s feedback confirmed this.

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. We saw kind and caring interactions between staff and people during our visits. We asked people if staff were polite, kind, and caring. One person said, “Yes, they are and I find them friendly which is good as I needed social interaction. I was quite lonely at home and I enjoy chatting here.”

The provider treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

We asked people and their relatives if the staff treated each person living at the service as an individual and knew their individual preferences. One person said, “Yes, I think they do.” A person’s relative said, “Yes, they know mum well.” We saw some people’s rooms were highly personalised. For example, one person’s room demonstrated their love of the local football team.

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. Most people who used the service had dementia. The service was not creative in their support for people with dementia to have as much independence and activity as possible in their daily lives.

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.

On our first visit to the care home, management of the service agreed call bell response times were not always prompt enough, largely due to the number and deployment of staff. When we arrived unannounced on the first day it was some time until we could attract staff attention through the glass interior door. The front doorbell was connected to the call bell system, but this was ineffective in attracting attention. This also happened to other members of our team and visiting health professionals. We heard from people call bells were slow to be responded to. However, by our second visit, deployment of staffing had been changed to better meet the need for quicker response to call bells, especially for people living on the top floor of the service.

The provider cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff, and supported and enabled staff to deliver adequate care.

The service employed a large number of staff on student visas who were studying in the UK from abroad. These staff said that their welfare, and training were well supported by the management at the service and by the provider.