Archmoor 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.

At our last assessment we rated this key question good. At this assessment the rating has changed to requires improvement. This meant people did not always feel well-supported.

The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to person-centred care. This was because people were not always able to access meaningful person-centred activities.

This service scored 60 (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 always sought to treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Throughout our assessment visit we observed many examples of natural, kind, caring and compassionate interactions between people and staff. Comments from people included, “The staff are wonderful and very caring” and “I’ve lived here for a while now and have no complaints. Everyone is nice."

Staff treated people as individuals and made sure people’s care and support met people’s needs and preferences. People's care plans detailed their care, communication and support needs and they were cared for by staff who knew them, and their preferences, well.

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 support and treatment wellbeing.

In our discussions with people, a lack of meaningful activities was a recurring theme. We noted some communal/group activities were on offer, but people were not always supported to participate in more meaningful person-centred activities that were important to them. Comments from people included, “We could do with a few more activities. I’d like to go out more but they probably don’t have the staff to do that with me” and, “I don't tend to join in with any of the activities really as they don’t suit me, so there is little to do”, also, “We do activities in the main lounge and go into the garden in the summer but that’s about it really.”

The service did not employ a dedicated activities coordinator, so care staff were expected to fulfil this role on top of their existing duties. We spoke at length with the provider and registered manager, feeding back what people had told us. We were told some attempts had been made in the past to take people out in the community, but this wasn’t something the home was actively looking at now. We stressed the importance of looking at people’s needs in a more holistic way that went beyond their personal care needs. Not having a dedicated activities role was clearly a barrier to achieving this in a meaningful way.

The service did not always respond to people’s needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress. As outlined in the safe section of this report under ‘staffing’ there wasn’t always enough staff to respond to people’s needs. During this assessment, we recognised as individuals and collectively, staff were doing their best with the resources available to them.

The provider did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

As outlined in the safe section of this report under ‘staffing’ staff were expected to complete online learning in their own time. Some staff told us this had a negative impact on their wellbeing and caused additional stress at home. We also saw staff were sometimes not afforded sufficient time to take their legal entitlement to a rest break during their shift. Breaks were often interrupted or cut short because help was needed elsewhere in the home.