West Ridings 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 did not always feel well-supported, cared for or treated with dignity and respect.

This service scored 55 (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 did not always treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion, or respect their privacy and dignity. Staff did not always treat colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

During our visits we observed interactions between people and staff. Some support was delivered with care and kindness, but we shared our concerns about some instances when people required support to maintain their dignity.

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’s assessed needs and preferences were not always considered in the delivery of their care. We found examples where people required support with mobilizing safely or to ensure they were not socially isolated but although this was planned in their documentation, this was not being delivered by staff. People’s communication needs were not always adequately met. For example, people who did not speak English as their first language were not always supported to communicate and understand staff.

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, treatment and wellbeing.

People were not always supported to have as much control over their care as possible.

We found examples of people who lived with dementia had been supported by night staff to get up and get dressed for the day, but there was no evidence this had been their choice or was their preference.

We also received comments from people confirming they were able to make choices about everyday decisions such as what to eat, dress and where to spend the day. Our observations confirmed this.

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.

The service had a call bell system in place for people to use if they required staff’s support. People gave us mixed feedback about staff’s responsiveness to their requests. Comments included, “[Call bell response]. It depends how busy they are. It gets a bit frustrating” and “Yes, no problem [staff come quickly].” One person told us they wanted to spend time outside but couldn’t because there were not enough staff and the call bell system could not be used there.

Some people who lived at the service were not able to use the call bell system due to their physical or mental health, and they required staff to carry on regular checks. We found examples where there was inconsistency in how often these people were checked by staff; placing them at risk of not having their needs anticipated in a timely way.

There were policies and procedures in place to support staff, such as ongoing training, supervisions and appraisals. Staff told us they felt mostly well supported by the management team with aspects related with their work life balance, however they also commented on the several changes in managements. A staff member told us, “It is a brand new one [manager] we’ve got. They change the management a lot at the top. I feel supported by the management team, but [manager] has only been with us 2 or 3 weeks, I don’t particularly know [them].” We sampled supervision records, and found these had taken place since our last assessment.