- Care home
Watermoor House
Assessment report published 13 May 2026
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Date of assessment: 5 March to 18 March 2026.
Watermoor House is a residential care home providing accommodation and personal care to elderly people and people with dementia. The reason for this assessment was to follow up on previous enforcement. We looked at 9 quality statements in the Safe and Well-Led key questions. The service had made improvements since the inspection in September 2025 and were no longer in breach of regulations around medicines and governance. We rated this service requires improvement overall.
There were people living at Watermoor House with a learning disability; however, this was not their primary need. 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 which most people take for granted. We found the provider was meeting the principles of ‘Right support, right care, right culture.’ People were supported to express their views in various ways and staff encouraged and supported people to lead as fulfilled a life as possible.
The service had systems and processes to assess risks to people and ensure they were safeguarded from avoidable harm. Staff completed safeguarding training and knew how to raise concerns. Staff were knowledgeable about people’s individual needs and risks, and how to keep them safe. There were enough staff to meet people’s needs in a timely way. Staff were recruited safely. The environment was clean, welcoming and homely, with personalised bedrooms and well-maintained communal spaces. We found some improvements had been made to medicines management.
The service was well led and the registered manager, deputy manager and wider management team led by example. Staff and relatives praised the visibility, accessibility and effectiveness of managers. The provider had addressed concerns identified at the September 2025 inspection. The ethos of the service was one of continuous improvement which focused on providing high-quality person-centred care and supporting people to achieve their goals.
The registered manager supported staff to follow up on things people wanted to do. For example, they supported staff to research and put risk assessments in place for people when they wanted to try something new or take positive risks.
People's experience of this service
People provided varied feedback about the service.
People told us they were safe at the service, "I love it here, I play bingo, it's my favourite and they always have entertainers coming in.” People said they were cared for by regular staff who were competent, kind and caring. A person said, “Staff help me a lot” and another said, “Staff take measures to make sure I am always safe and don’t fall.” However, some people told us staff did not always seem to listen to them when they made suggestions regarding their medicine management and mobility equipment. Some people could not directly tell us about their experiences; therefore, we made observations and used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experience of people who could not talk with us. We saw from our observations staff spoke kindly and meaningfully with people, they spent time with them in an unrushed manner and engaged them in activities.