All inspections: Bowood Mews - Care Quality Commission

Many of the people who lived at the home were unable to communicate their experiences and views about the care they received. Therefore we spent time at the home watching to see how staff supported people. We also looked at records, and spoke with eight members of staff, the home manager and a senior manager.

People that were able to speak with us were positive about the care and support provided. One person said: “If I need anything at all they (staff) will help me at any time” and “Can’t grumble about any of them.” Another person said: “The food is normally quite good.”

It was clear from what we saw on the day of our inspection that staff knew people’s social and health care needs. This was demonstrated in the individual support people received from staff. What we saw matched the care plans that were personal to each person and written with and for people who lived at the home.

We saw positive interactions between staff and people with lots of chatter and laughter during the day with staff helping people make simple everyday decisions. There were arrangements in place where required to help people with the bigger decisions so that their best interests were upheld.

We saw that people who lived at the home had their medicines as prescribed at the right time and in the right way. This made sure people’s health needs were effectively met.

We saw that the provider had effective systems in place that made sure staff training was planned and delivered including dementia awareness. This meant staff knew how to provide care and support to people living with dementia.

The provider had responsive systems in place to monitor and review people’s experiences and complaints to ensure improvements were made where necessary.

There were 25 people were living in the home when we visited. We talked with some of them about their experiences of living there on the day of our visit and we spoke with a relative of another person after our visit.

Some of the people that lived in Bowood Mews have dementia and therefore not everyone was able to tell us about their care. To help us to understand the experiences people have, we used our SOFI (Short Observational Framework for Inspection) tool. The SOFI tool allows us to spend time watching what is going on in a service and helps us to record how people spend their time, the type of support they get and whether they have positive experiences.

During our observations we saw that there were good relationships between the staff and the people that lived in the home. Staff were mostly friendly and respectful when speaking with people. We saw that staff offered people assistance with their personal care discreetly. Staff offered people choices during the day these included, how they wanted to spend their time.

The people living in the home and a relative that we spoke with told us that they were happy with the standards of care and support from staff to meet their needs. Comments received included:-

'Staff are friendly' and would 'assist them if they needed help.'

'I am fine and have no worries.'

We observed lunch being served to people during our visit. Staff were seen to offer people choices of where they would like to eat their meal. Some of the people who lived in the home and relatives of another person who we spoke with told us that they were happy with the meals provided at Bowood Mews. One person told us, 'I can choose my own meals which I like doing.'

One person told us that if they needed extra support or if they needed to see a doctor, staff arranged this quickly. One relative commented that staff ''phone me straight away' and ''communication is good'.

One person who lived in the home and a relative that we spoke with were confident that they could raise concerns if they were not happy with the care being received and that they would be listened to.

Archived: Bowood Mews

All Inspections

25 July 2013

During a routine inspection

29 June 2012

During a routine inspection