The Bungalow

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 50 (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.

Care records contained patronising and infantilising language. For example, staff repeatedly recorded that one person had been "good", demonstrating poor regard for respectful and person-centred language. Confidential information was not adequately secured, compromising peoples' dignity and privacy.

People were treated with kindness and compassion. One person’s relative told us, “Staff definitely value and respect [Person’s name]”. During the inspection, we observed positive and respectful interactions between staff and people using the service. Individual staff demonstrated a good knowledge of people's individual needs and preferences and provided support in a caring and responsive manner. Staff responded appropriately to people's needs and offered reassurance and support when required.
 

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 individual needs were not always reflected in the support they received. Communication plans were not always accurate or up to date and did not consistently guide staff on how to support people effectively. Care planning had not always been updated to reflect changes in people's needs, resulting in limited opportunities for meaningful engagement and personalised support.

However, one person’s relative described activities their family member enjoyed whilst at the service, they told us, “Staff look after person’s name, they take them around the village with two 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 make choices and have control over their care. Staff were inconsistent in how they offered choices and people were not always supported using communication approaches that reflected their current needs. For example, staff sometimes recorded a person was unable to make food choices due to their specific needs, despite care plans identifying a range of food preferences. Another person’s care plan stated they liked to sit with staff and plan their schedule, care notes showed this rarely happened.

Communication plans also lacked guidance about alternative approaches when people declined to use the communication tools identified in their care plan and staff continued to use tools that people preferred not to engage with.
 

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.

People could not always be assured their immediate needs would be met safely and consistently. Records showed incidents of distressed behaviour were not always fully reviewed or investigated, limiting opportunities to identify appropriate actions and learning. In addition, some risk assessments contained inappropriate guidance for responding to injuries, which increased the risk of people receiving ineffective support when they needed it.

During the assessment we saw staff responded to people’s routine, daily needs as and when they required support.
 

The provider did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

Staff were not consistently enabled to provide person-centred care. The concerns identified during the assessment indicated gaps in staff practice, oversight and adherence to care planning and behaviour support guidance. The provider had not ensured staff received the support and direction necessary to consistently achieve positive outcomes for people.

Staff had access to supervision and meetings and described positive support from leaders. One member of staff said, “I do feel supported. I can go to a supervisor, team leader or manager, they are good and supportive.”