Baylham Care Home

On this page

• Overview
• Assessing needs
• Delivering evidence-based care and treatment
• How staff, teams and services work together
• Supporting people to live healthier lives
• Monitoring and improving outcomes
• Consent to care and treatment

Effective – this means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence.

At our last assessment we rated this key question good. At this assessment the rating has changed to requires improvement. This meant the effectiveness of people’s care, treatment and support did not always achieve good outcomes or was inconsistent.

This service scored 58 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We did not look at Assessing needs during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

Best practice tools were used to assess people’s needs, such as tools to assess if people were at risk of malnutrition or skin integrity concerns. However, care plans were not always kept up to date and best practice was not always followed. For example, people were living with dementia, and some people were at risk of becoming distressed. Where people were observed to be showing signs of distress, staff did not consistently employ clear strategies or techniques when supporting the person. This did not support a person-centred approach in line with good practice guidance for meeting the needs of people living with.Following our inspection, the provider told us they have a program of specialised training delivered to staff to equip them with the skills to work with people.

We did not look at How staff, teams and services work together during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

The provider did not always support people to manage their health and wellbeing. Staff did not always support people to live healthier lives, or where possible, reduce their future needs for care and support. Whilst the provider was monitoring people’s weight loss, where people had previously been at risk of weight loss, were losing weight or they had high levels of activity due to walking around the care home, they were not consistently offered alternative foods, extra snacks or fortified foods. A member of staff said, “At night we give people toast if they ask but there is no supper otherwise and no milky drinks.”

People had access to their GP and other health services to ensure their health and wellbeing was addressed.

Records were not sufficiently robust to evidence staff were monitoring people’s care. Oversight was lacking with regards to monitoring care and treatment, learning lessons, taking action, and improving outcomes for people. For example, care record entries were recorded in different parts of the care planning system and therefore there was no effective oversight to ensure people who were at risk had their care needs met. The provider recognised improvements were needed with the care planning system and was in the process of moving to a new system.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA) provides a legal framework for making particular decisions on behalf of people who may lack the mental capacity to do so for themselves. The MCA requires that, as far as possible, people make their own decisions and are helped to do so when needed. When they lack mental capacity to take particular decisions, any made on their behalf must be in their best interests and as least restrictive as possible. People can only be deprived of their liberty to receive care and treatment when this is in their best interests and legally authorised under the MCA. In care homes, and some hospitals, this is usually through MCA application procedures called the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS).

People were not consistently involved in making decisions about their care and a person-centred approach to care was lacking. Whilst some staff we spoke with understood the principles of capacity and consent, people’s experiences demonstrated that this was not always considered. Staff did not always take the time to act on people’s wishes with some people receiving poor experiences around their personal care needs being met in a timely way.