The Fairways

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 remained good. This meant people were supported and treated with dignity and respect; and involved as partners in their care.

This service scored 65 (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 always treated people with kindness, empathy and compassion and respected their privacy and dignity. Staff treated colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

People and relatives said despite the shortfalls at times in numbers of staff available, staff were caring. People said staff were trying their best and compassionate. Comments about the staff included, “The staff are very good, helpful and caring. If I want something they will try and come up with it for me” and “I am happy here, the staff are good to me.” One relative told us, “The staff work incredibly hard and are friendly and approachable.”

We observed some staff interacting with people positively and demonstrating an understanding of their communication needs. When staff were supporting people to eat, they sat down next to them and took time to provide care at the person’s pace. However, we also observed some staff standing watching people and not taking time to sit down and engage with them.

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.

Some people’s care records did not contain enough information for staff to know about people’s needs. For some people who had not been at the service very long, care plans had gaps in recording so there was very little information recorded. The providers systems to obtain more information about people were not working effectively. This meant staff did not always have an understanding of people’s needs. Some relatives told us they had to repeatedly tell staff what care to provide or what a person’s preferences were.

Following our site visits, the provider told us they had taken action to audit all care records for people admitted to the service in recent months. This would help them make sure people’s needs were recorded.

The provider promoted people’s independence, so people knew their rights and had choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

People could have visits from friends and family without restrictions. We observed many relatives visiting over our site visits.

There were activities programmes in place which had been planned to try and provide people with variety, and the opportunity to do something they enjoyed. People said overall they enjoyed the activities; however, some feedback was that activities were not always stimulating. We observed group activities such as music therapy and craft-based activities. But there were also individual engagement activities happening giving people an opportunity for a more 1-1 approach.

People had a choice of where they wanted to spend their time and what they wanted to do during the day. People were also supported to make choices, for example, staff showed people menu options on plates so they could visually see what choice was for meals.

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.

We observed people’s needs were not always responded to in a timely way. Staff were not always available to respond to distress or requests for support. People in their rooms had call bells. The provider monitored the call bell use and identified any bells ringing for more than 5 minutes. We observed data which indicated call bells were regularly ringing for over 5 minutes. The acting home manager told us for people who had sensor mats to monitor their movements for safety reasons, the call bell did not indicate if the mat had triggered the alarm. This meant staff did not know if the person was calling for assistance or the mat had been triggered. On numerous occasions people were found on the floor by the time staff got to their room. Actions were to share the data with staff at meetings; however, these meetings did not always take place, so the data was not shared with staff.

We observed people were not always supported adequately during lunch. Staff were not responding to people’s needs as they were ignoring people or not looking in the person’s direction. This meant they were not observing when people needed further assistance.

We observed 1 person with a soiled dressing on their leg at 9am. They told us they had spoken to staff and were getting the help they needed. However, when we returned at 12pm their dressing was still visibly soiled, and they said nobody had been to see them. We observed the person in their room from the corridor. Their soiled dressing was very visible. We raised this with the deputy manager who took action to contact community nurses. However, when we checked this following our site visit, we were told the person was not able to see a community nurse until the next day.

The provider cared about and promoted the wellbeing of their staff, and supported and enabled staff to always deliver person-centred care.

The provider had systems to promote staff wellbeing. Staff had access to a variety of resources for a range of health and mental health issues. For example, staff could access GP appointments and free counselling. Resources were often also extended to staff’s immediate family members. Staff said during the recent hot weather staff had been able to wear a relaxed uniform that was cooler. Leaders had checked in with staff making sure they were cool and providing ice-lollies.

Staff shared examples of not having support from the provider to manage difficult conversations they were having with people about their behaviours. Staff did not always feel adequately supported by leaders when responding to these situations. Some staff described feeling isolated when managing complex behaviours and told us they were expected to deal with incidents without receiving clear guidance, debriefs or consistent management support.