Weir Gardens Nursing Home

On this page

• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

Well-led – this means we looked for evidence that service leadership, management and governance assured high-quality, person-centred care; supported learning and innovation; and promoted an open, fair culture.
This is the first assessment for this service. This key question has been rated good. This meant the service was consistently managed and well-led. Leaders and the culture they created promoted high-quality, person-centred care. However, not all audits were effective at capturing risks which meant not all risks were mitigated.
 

This service scored 71 (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 had a shared vision, strategy and culture. This was based on transparency, equity, equality and human rights, diversity and inclusion, engagement, and understanding challenges and the needs of people and their communities. The provider promoted a culture that was focused on improving the quality of care and outcomes for people living at the service. Staff appraisals were based on the providers values. Staff who had gone above and beyond to promote the values were nominated for an annual award. The registered manager told us, “Compassion and integrity is really important”.

The service had inclusive leaders at all levels who understood the context in which they delivered care, treatment and support and embodied the culture and values of their workforce and organisation. Leaders had the skills, knowledge, experience and credibility to lead effectively. They did so with integrity, openness and honesty.
The registered manager was experienced, skilled and knowledgeable. They were the registered manager for 1 of the providers other services. They told us they had good support from the provider to be able to have oversite of both services. In addition, they were supported by a deputy manager, clinical lead and support manager. Senior managers visited the service regularly, people, relatives and staff knew them. Despite the registered manager only being in post for 6 weeks at the time of our assessment, they knew people and staff well. Staff told us they were supported and felt listened to. We received positive feedback from people since the changeover of provider and registered manager. One relative told us, “Their [management] approach has been thoughtful, consistent, and empathetic and have taken time to understand my family member complex needs”.
 

The provider fostered a positive culture where people felt they could speak up and their voice would be heard. People were encouraged to speak up, the provider had systems in place to enable them to do this. Staff told us they were aware of the providers whistleblowing policy and felt comfortable about speaking up. Schedules were in place for staff to have regular supervision meetings with their line manager and staff meetings where they could raise concerns.

The provider valued diversity in their workforce. They work towards an inclusive and fair culture by improving equality and equity for people who work for them. They fostered an inclusive workplace that welcomed staff from a range of backgrounds, cultures and experiences. They supported this with initiatives such as employee of the month recognition, regular staff surveys to gather feedback, and family friendly policies which promoted work-life balance.

Whilst the provider had clear responsibilities, roles, systems of accountability and good governance, audits had not picked up on visible environmental risks. Since the provider became registered with The Care Quality Commission in April 2025, they had started to introduce their governance systems to support the delivery of safe and effective care. Where shortfalls were found, action plans were created to address any findings and drive improvements. However, some of the issues we identified during our assessment had not been identified through the providers own checks and audits as referred to in the safe section of this report. Further time was needed for the systems to be fully embedded for their effectiveness to be assessed. Despite our findings we found this had no negative impact on people. The registered manager understood their responsibilities under the duty of candour and gave examples of when they would apply this. Staff had access to policies and procedures. A ‘policy of the month’ was sent to staff and was promoted in the monthly provider newsletter to help promote consistency and awareness.

The Provider understood their duty to collaborate and work in partnership, so services work seamlessly for people. They share information and learning with partners and collaborate for improvement. Staff and leaders established links within the local community to promote social inclusion and integration. Some of the links included the local church, scouts and an ex-military group. Feedback from health professionals was positive, they told us the service worked well with them to improve outcomes for people.

The provider focused on continuous learning, innovation and improvement across the organisation and local system. They encouraged creative ways of delivering equality of experience, outcome and quality of life for people. They actively contribute to safe, effective practice and research. The provider and registered manager recognised the importance of learning lessons from accidents, incidents, audits and feedback. The registered manager was in the process of embedding practice in the service where lessons learnt were part of daily meetings. Staff told us findings from our first day of assessment had been shared and discussed with them.