Bamburgh Supported Living

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 inspection we rated this key question good. At this inspection the rating has changed to requires improvement. This meant people did not always feel well-supported, cared for or treated with dignity and respect.

The provider was in breach of the legal regulations in relation to treating people with dignity and respect.
 

This service scored 45 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

People were not treated with kindness, compassion, dignity and respect at all times. People's care plans and incident reports contained language that was not consistently compassionate, dignified or person-centred when describing their needs. We found examples of language that could be perceived as punitive rather than supportive of people's communication and support needs, including references to people being ‘given firm boundaries’, not being given ‘a reward for the given behaviour’ and their ‘demands not being met’.
Incident reports did not consistently demonstrate a respectful and compassionate understanding of how people communicated when experiencing distress. They did not consider what could have been done differently to minimise the risk of the person experiencing distress. The terminology used across care documentation did not reflect current best practice or promote a person-centred approach to care and support.
 

The provider did not consistently treat people as individuals or ensure their care and support reflected their needs, preferences and wishes. Whilst staff were able to tell us about people’s preferences for support, we found their care plans did not fully consider people's strengths, abilities, aspirations, cultural needs, backgrounds or protected characteristics. Records did not provide sufficient guidance for staff on how to deliver holistic, person-centred support that reflected what was important to the person and how best to achieve good outcomes.

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 care. People’s care plans did not demonstrate how to provide choice and promote independence in line with people’s individual communication needs.

Despite these gaps in documentation, staff were able to describe how they encouraged people to maintain independence in their personal care and make choices about their social activities.
 

The provider did not always demonstrate how they listened and responded to people’s needs in the moment to minimise discomfort or concerns. Incident reports did not consistently evidence how staff had responded to provide reassurance, address people’s needs promptly or reduce potential distress. The provider had not always reviewed this information to identify learning or understand how people were supported during periods of distress to improve their experience.

The provider could not always demonstrate how staff wellbeing was supported. Whilst the provider told us workforce wellbeing initiatives were in place, we received mixed feedback from staff about how supported and valued they felt. Some staff spoke positively about the support available, whilst others told us they did not always feel listened to and described low morale. This meant wellbeing initiatives were not consistently embedded across the organisation.