- Care home
The Cotswolds
Assessment report published 8 December 2025
Contents
Ratings
Our view of the service
Dates of assessment: We visited the site on 8 and 16 of September 2025. We reviewed evidence off site as part of the assessment and the assessment concluded on 24 October 2025.
This assessment was carried out in response to an increase in concerns as well as an aged rating, with our last assessment taking place in 2020.
The service is a care home providing accommodation, nursing and personal care for up to 41 people primarily with acquired brain injuries.
The provider had good systems and processes in place, providing them with good oversight of the service. They worked with people, relatives and staff to gather feedback and embed changes where needed.
We found some issues during our assessment, for example, not everyone was clearly involved in care planning, and the provider weren’t always adhering to frequencies around health and safety servicing. However, many issues we found, the provider had already identified. They were able to evidence this within an action plan they were already working to. We could see that some actions had already been partially completed.
The provider had a large multi-disciplinary team, which consisted of many different professionals, such as nurses, doctors and psychologists, with the shared aim of amplifying people’s experience of neurorehabilitation. Professionals utilised not only their knowledge, skills and experience, but also nationally recognised tools, adapted for the relevant service to reach this goal. Additionally, the provider worked collaboratively within the sector with the aim to improve people’s care experiences on a wider level.
We found there was an open culture, which incorporated kindness and collaboration, and person-centredness was upheld in many aspects of the service. This filtered through all staff, of varying roles and professions. There was room for improvement to ensure all people experienced the same level of person-centred care.
Staff were happy in their roles, and most staff felt supported. There was an overall feeling amongst staff that they needed more front-line staff, to provide a truly meaningful and person-centred service to people. One staff member told us “I feel quite guilty, because I feel like I’m not able to give the best standard of care I’ve always given at the moment and that upsets me.”
Training was provided to staff to enable them to complete their role to a good standard, however there were some gaps where there had been a delay in the provider sourcing and organising training. This could have had impact on people’s experience; however, we did not find evidence of impact during our assessment.
People's experience of this service
Most people were happy with their care, or the care their relative received. People and relatives felt involved, although not everyone had the same experience. People and relatives spoke highly of the staff; one person told us “I get on with the staff very well” and a relative told us “My interaction with staff has been good all the way through.” Some people felt that staff were just completing their tasks and doing their job as required. One relative told us that staff always meet the basic personal care needs, of their relative using the service, however they often had to point out and request additional tasks, such as nailcare, as this was often not done. Overall, people felt that the provider enabled them to have control over their care and develop independence. One relative told us, when asked whether they felt their relative using the service had choice and control over their day-to-day care, “Yes, they always ask [relative] and tell them what they are going to do.” Not everyone could tell us directly about their experiences, so we used our Short Observational Framework for Inspection to gauge their feelings. We found that most interactions between them and staff were either neutral or negative.