Fairmile Grange 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 service involved people and treated them with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.

This is the first assessment for this newly registered 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 55 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service did not always treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion, or respect their privacy and dignity. Staff did not always treat colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

People consistently told us they were only happy with care provided by certain staff members. Feedback from people and their relatives highlighted the impact of the service having a high turnover of staff, with people speaking fondly of staff members who had left.

Staff did not always understand the need to make sure that people’s privacy and dignity was maintained. During our inspection we observed tools to support people’s privacy and dignity not being used correctly. For example, signs on bedroom doors stating “care in progress” were left on the door throughout the day, including times the person was no longer in their bedroom. On one occasion, we asked carers to close the door when providing people personal care with it open. We shared this feedback with leaders who informed us they would address these concerns directly with staff in a reflective supervision.
 

The service did not always treat people as individuals or make sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They did not always take account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

Records did not detail people’s preferences and most of the care plans viewed during the inspection did not include people’s spiritual or cultural needs.

Staff told us they did not always have information in care plans about people’s preferences; one staff member told us, “We always ask and check with people so we can follow their wishes.”
 

The service 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 were not treated as equal partners in their care and therefore their abilities and skills were not always assessed. This meant people were not supported to achieve or maintain their independence, people’s care plans did not identify individual goals to promote or improve their wellbeing.

We discussed this shortfall with the nominated individual, who conducted their own review of care plans. The nominated individual told us they committed to a full review of each person’s care plan and would put additional staff resources in place to facilitate this.

At mealtimes we observed respectful interactions between people and staff. Staff gave people choice and took their time when supporting a person who needed assistance with eating, checking which part of their meal they would like to have next.
 

The service 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.

People told us there were times when they did not feel well supported or cared for. Gaps in records reflected instances people’s care had not been provided when planned.
A staff member told us, “Staff are thin on the ground, and this often leave people unsupervised in the lounge, particularly when call bells are going off.”
 

The service cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff.

Most staff shared positive feedback about their colleagues and the commitment of long-standing members of the team. Staff were generally positive about improvements to the environment made by the new provider and spoke with hope for further improvements.

The provider had structures and policies in place to support workforce wellbeing and enablement. Posters for access to mental health support and self-guided tools available to staff were displayed on notice boards in the service.