Sugarman Health and Wellbeing - Watford

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.

People were treated with kindness. Their relatives felt the staff were caring and gave examples of the difference they had made to their quality of life and wellbeing. A person described a distressing experience and told us, “The staff are so kind, they go above and beyond. Both carers came out to make sure I was ok. I don’t know what I would have done without the support from the Sugarman senior care staff.” A relative said, “The current carers definitely treat my [relative] with real care and respect.”

The provider treated people as individuals and took account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations and culture. People’s care records included information about their protected characteristics and social interests with detailed information on how people liked to spend their time.

People’s care records included guidance for staff to support with communication. This included where people were nonverbal or struggled to be understood. For example, we saw information for how people would indicate they were in pain. Staff were able to describe how they communicated with people. A staff member said, “From [their] signs, from facial expressions. [They] can show you things with [their] hands, [their] eyes. Most of the time you can understand.”

Staff supported people to maintain their independence. People’s care plans included information of what they were able to do for themselves. For example, where support was required with personal care, it stated whether the person was able to wash their face or brush their teeth independently. A relative told us, “The current carers definitely do all they possibly can to help [person] stay healthy and active and as independent as possible."

People were supported to make choices. A person told us, “It’s really important to me that I can still make choices about food etc, and the carers help me do a shopping list so that I still have those choices.”

People were supported to achieve goals including travel overseas. We saw other examples which included working towards activities such as horse riding. A professional told us, “They make adjustments to support patients living as high a quality of life as possible and facilitate trips out for complex patients.”

The provider had not ensured staff responded to people’s needs as required. Staff did not always document in people’s records to show support had been provided. This included for social aspects of their care. For example, a care record we reviewed described how to support the person’s sensory needs, but we saw no evidence of this in their daily logs. Where daily logs were completed these tended to be mainly personal/clinical tasks and did not always include the time care was provided. This meant we were not assured staff responded to people’s needs in a timely way.

The provider did not always promote the wellbeing of their staff. Feedback from staff about support from managers was mixed. A staff member told us, “I feel well supported by the managers and the wider team at Sugarman.” However, we were also told, I don’t think I have been supported by Sugarman when I really need them most.”
We reviewed staff supervision records and whilst there was a prompt to discuss staff workload and wellbeing, we found they did not include a response to issues raised by staff. For example, a member of staff described feeling stretched. Therefore, we were not assured all staff were supported well.