Capricorn Cottage

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

Effective – this means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence.

At our last assessment we rated this key question Good. At this assessment the rating has remained Good. This meant people’s outcomes were consistently good, and people’s feedback confirmed this.

This service scored 75 (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 made sure people’s care and treatment was effective by assessing and reviewing their health, care, wellbeing and communication needs with them.

People’s needs were assessed prior to coming to the service to ensure the staff could effectively support them. The registered manager told us they worked hard to ensure people’s needs could be met before accepting them. We saw nationally recognised assessment tools were used to provide staff with guidance to manage different aspects of people’s health needs. This included the use of the Malnutrition Universal Screening Tool (MUST) to monitor people’s weights and the Waterlow scoring tool to establish people’s risk of skin tissue damage.

People’s communication needs were met by staff using different tools to support individuals. Some people used picture boards to help them communicate and other people used sign language. People’s relatives were involved in the assessment of people’s needs. Relatives told us they had regular meetings with the deputy manager and registered manager and were involved in the assessment of their family member’s needs.

We did not look at Delivering evidence-based care and treatment during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Supporting people to live healthier lives during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

The provider told people about their rights around consent and respected these when delivering person-centred care and treatment.

People’s relatives told us staff worked with people to gain their consent when providing care. Some people at the service had the mental capacity to make a lot of their own choices about their care and staff worked with them at their level of understanding, offering choices in the way people could understand.

Staff were aware of their responsibilities of gaining people’s consent to the care they provided. They were able to give examples of how they would do this. A relative we spoke with told us when asking their family member if they wanted to go out for a walk. Staff would use sign language to ask the person to get their shoes and coat, then the person would understand they were being asked if they wanted to go out.

People were also supported in line with the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Where people’s liberty had been restricted, the provider had ensured this was done lawfully using the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS) process. They ensured people’s needs were properly assessed and supported by their relatives, relevant health professionals and staff. Relatives, relevant health professionals and staff also used the best interest meetings process to ensure any decisions made for people were made in their best interest. Where restrictions had been put in place, these were reviewed regularly to ensure they were still relevant to people’s care.

We spoke with one relative who gave us an example of how their knowledge of their family member had been used to support them with the use of a specialist bed, why it was needed and the benefits to the person’s quality of life.