Windmill House

Updated 7 March 2025

We completed assessment visits to Windmill House on the 18 and 26 March 2025. This is a service for older people, people living with dementia and people with physical disabilities or sensory impairments. At the time of our inspection there were 53 people living at the service, and 1 person in hospital.

At our last inspection completed in May 2023, we identified a number of breaches of the regulations in relation to the provision of safe care and treatment, good governance, safe staffing levels and protecting people from the risks of harm and abuse. As an outcome of the last inspection, we imposed conditions on the provider’s registration at this location, requiring them to provide monthly updates to the Care Quality Commission (CQC) demonstrating a return to compliance with the regulations. This service has been in Special Measures since August 2023. The provider demonstrated improvements that have been made. The service is no longer rated as inadequate overall or in any of the key questions. Therefore, this service is no longer in Special Measures.

At this inspection, we found considerable improvements had been made to the overall standards of care and support people received. Staff worked as a collaborative team and received consistent management support and oversight to drive individual staff performance and improvements within the service. Staff demonstrated clear skills, competence and knowledge of how to meet people’s individual care and support needs, ensuring provision of personalised care.

We found staff and leaders to be responsive to our feedback, and suggestions made and demonstrated a commitment to ensuring the service continues to improve, and changes made are fully embedded.

Staff and leaders demonstrated compassion and kindness to people and their relatives, as well as to each other, which resulted in positive care outcomes, and a good atmosphere within the service, our findings were supported by positive feedback we received during the inspection.

As an outcome of this inspection, the service has made sufficient improvements and no longer remains placed in special measures and is no longer in breach of the regulations.

Updated 7 March 2025

People were living in a caring, visibly clean and comfortable environment, with sufficient numbers of suitably trained and competent staff to meet their assessed needs. People received their medicines on time and were supported to attend medical appointments and have access to the GP when required. People living with long term health conditions, received good oversight from staff and external medical professionals to keep them fit and well.

People, including those living with dementia were supported to ensure they had access to meaningful activities during the week and at weekends. People were encouraged to participate in in-house activities, as well as regular trips out into the community and surrounding areas using the service’s own transport.

People gave positive feedback about the food and spoke fondly about their interactions with the chef and kitchen team. People were supported to maintain healthy lifestyles, with exercise-based activities, as well as support with food and fluids to support healthy increases in weight, or management of swallowing risks where identified. Our findings were confirmed from feedback we received, including “The food is great, there is a wonderful menu. The menus are changed, there is a visual menu and always choice.”

People’s needs were responded to in a timely way, and people confirmed this was also the case during the night. A relative told us, “There are enough staff, and if they are short staffed the service get agency staff if they need to. [Relative] is not kept waiting.”

People and their relatives were encouraged to give feedback regularly on all aspects of their care, and each person had a keyworker assigned, to ensure their needs and wishes were kept under regular review. We received positive feedback from people and their relatives in relation to the standards of care provided, and improvements made to the service under the current registered manager, we were told, “The ethos is very caring….. we are really happy with the care.”