Autumn House Residential 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 requires improvement. At this assessment the rating has remained requires improvement. This meant people did not always feel well-supported, cared for or treated 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.

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 interactions with people were kind, promoted dignity and were respectful. For example, staff spoke to people calmly and kindly and discreetly encouraged people to maintain their personal hygiene needs.

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.

Improvements had not been made since the previous inspection, Care plans did not always contain people’s preferences, histories or what mattered to them. This increased the risk of people receiving generic support that did not meet their emotional needs or preferences. Staff were unable to provide personalised support, for example, when staff encouraged a person to engage in conversation, they could not talk about things that mattered to the person. This caused the person to become distressed.

The newly appointed home manager was aware care plans lacked essential information and was planning on meeting with people and where appropriate their families to gain this information.

Some staff had worked with people for a long time and understood people’s unique backgrounds, culture and their strengths, this knowledge was being captured and embedded into people’s care plans.

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 did not have the opportunity to participate in their hobbies and interests. There were activities in the main lounge, however these were inflexible and people’s needs and preferences had not been considered. For example, we observed 5 people in the main lounge for 30 minutes, whilst an activity was taking place, staff failed to include 4 people in the activity, and they spent the entire time appearing withdrawn.

The service failed to enable people to choose where they spent their time, Staff were focussed on ensuring people were in the communal lounge, when people chose to leave the lounge, staff redirected them back to the lounge, without considering the persons wishes.

The service had installed a kitchenette, however this was not being promoted, as staff continued to offer people drinks at set times and failed to consider enabling people to make their own drinks and snacks.

The newly appointed manager was aware of this and started to work with the staff during the inspection to improve people’s experience and promote choice and control.

The provider did not always 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.

People’s care plans lacked essential details of some people’s medical conditions. Some staff were not able to tell us people’s health conditions or how they would identify if someone was becoming unwell. This increased the risk of people not receiving support when their health was declining.

The newly appointed manager was aware of this and was working with staff who knew people well, to ensure people’s care plans contained essential information and this information was shared with the rest of the team.

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

We received mixed feedback from staff, some staff told us they were very happy and felt supported by the provider, other staff said, they did not feel supported, felt bullied and not listened to. Staff did not receive regular supervision meetings or support to improve their performance. This increased the risk of poor staff morale and staff performance.

There were no systems to celebrate good performance or success.However, following the inspection the provider confirmed a staff reward and incentive system had been reintroduced.