Aldercar Residential 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 were not treated as individuals nor were they empowered to be independent and make their own choices. The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to person-centred care.

This service scored 50 (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 observed staff being kind and patient with people, they appeared to know people well and had lots of friendly banter with them. People told us they felt staff were kind and caring. People also confirmed staff always knocked before entering their room, to respect their privacy and dignity.

Healthcare professionals spoke positively about staff. One said, “I am particularly impressed by the staff’s kindness, communication, and willingness to go above and beyond to ensure residents feel safe, comfortable, and valued.”

The provider 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.

People did not allways have care plans in place which identified and documented their preferences to guide staff on how best to support them. Whilst some identified certain religious needs, the provider did not always ensure people were supported with these. The provider did advise they were in the process of recruiting an activities coordinator who would assist with meeting people’s cultural and spiritual needs.

Staff did know people well, but people told us they felt staff were quite busy and didn’t have the opportunity to spend time interacting with them.

The provider did not promote people’s independence, so people did not know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

People told us they felt they were often “done to” rather than being asked about their preferences and given choice. Examples of this were that staff chose what people wore without asking them and that staff encouraged people to get up for breakfast so that everyone would eat together.

People also felt staff did not have the time to promote independence and empower them. A person explained they felt they could dress themselves but “staff are busy and its quicker if they do it for me.”

The restrictive practice as described in the Safe section of this report also meant that people were unable to always move around the home independently due their mobility equipment not being left close by.

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.

We observed people having to wait for support and get increasingly distressed whilst doing so, staff were task focussed and therefore were not always responding to people’s immediate needs. People told us staff were busy and they sometimes had to wait.

There was no effective process in place for obtaining people’s views and wishes.

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.

Staff described a difficult working environment over the past year that had recently improved following the appointment of a new home manager. They now felt supported and positive about the improved atmosphere and team spirit.

The provider had failed to ensure staff were enabled to deliver person-centred care due to the lack of care planning.