Westmead

Updated 8 January 2025

Date of Assessment: 25 February, 3 and 4 March 2025. Westmead is a residential care home providing accommodation and personal care to up to 9 people. At the time of our assessment, there were 8 people living at the home. The service provides support to people with learning disabilities and autistic people. Support was provided to people in their own flats and bungalows. We assessed the service against ‘Right support, right care, right culture’ guidance to make judgements about whether the provider guaranteed people with a learning disability and autistic people respect, equality, dignity, choices, independence and good access to local communities that most people take for granted.

This was a planned assessment to check if the provider had made improvements since our last assessment. The provider was previously in breach of the legal regulations in relation to person centred care, safe care and treatment, safeguarding, safety of equipment and premises, governance and staffing. Improvements were found at this assessment and the provider was no longer in breach of these regulations. This service has been in Special Measures since 24 January 2025. The provider demonstrated improvements have been made. The service is no longer rated as inadequate overall or in any of the key questions. Therefore, this service is no longer in Special Measures.

The provider had a good learning culture and people, staff and relatives could raise concerns. Managers investigated incidents appropriately. People were protected and kept safe. Staff understood and managed well risks linked to people’s care. Staff managed medicines well. The facilities and equipment met people’s needs. There were enough staff with the right skills, qualifications and experience. We found evidence of ongoing work being done to ensure these improvements continued to be embedded in the delivery of care and continued areas for improvement had been identified by the management team.

Updated 8 January 2025

People were positive about their care and support provided by staff. One person wrote to us during our visits saying, “[Name of person] likes flat [number of their flat]. Good days are when going out to buy newspaper, jigsaws and envelops with [name of staff member] and [name of staff member].” Some people could not directly tell us about their experience so we carried out several observations during our visits to understand their experience of care. This approach showed people were included and listened to and most staff spoke positively about people. In our observations, we saw positive and relaxed interactions between people and staff. When asked for feedback, 1 person responded affirmatively using their preferred way of communication when asked if they liked living at Westmead, if they enjoyed their home, and if staff listened to them.

We received mixed feedback from relatives in relation to people’s safety, activities and complaints. We gathered additional information from the registered manager in relation to this and we were assured this feedback was known and action had been taken or was in progress. All relatives were positive about staff being kind and about the registered manager.