New Partnerships Lynray and Peach Cottage

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 were not always cared for or treated with dignity and respect.

This service scored 55 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

We received inconsistent feedback about the care, empathy and support provided by staff. Some relatives talked about individual staff members and how kind and caring they were, but concerns were also raised about the commitment and quality of the support provided by other staff. Relatives told us that staff were not unpleasant, but some did the minimum required and left their family member in their bedroom with little or no engagement. One relative told us, “My relative has had hundreds of carers since being there and they haven't got any commitment to what their job is, just a job and they want to get it over and done with.”

The provider told us that they recognised the benefits of people being supported by a consistent team. They told us they were working to ensure people were supported by a core team and reducing the use of bank and agency staff. They said thatthey were taking action to address poor practice, and we saw that they had taken disciplinary action when shortfalls had recently been identified.

People were treated as individuals with different abilities, interests and aspirations.

People told us that they were happy living in the service. People had choice about what they wanted to eat and drink, and their activities were individualised, reflecting their differing interests. People’s rooms contained their own personal effects and were decorated differently reflecting what was important to them.

Staff told us that they promoted people’s independence and choice and told us about the activities they had enabled people to attend such as banger racing, music festivals and zoo trips.

One person attended a work placement each week and another person assisted with safety checks in the property.

However, we received different feedback from relatives who told us that some of the new staff had very limited experience in care and were not always able to drive the vehicles which reduced the opportunities for access to the community. They told us that a number of the activities that their family member previously attended had stopped or had to be changed due to staffing. One relative told us, “My relatives world is very small, if you can only just walk to the park and back,” We observed a person leaving the service accompanied by two staff, the staff ensured that the person was safe from passing traffic but consideration was not given to engaging them in an activity, and they were constantly redirected back to the service.

The provider told us that they tried where possible to recruit staff who could drive, and action was being taken to update positive behaviour plans to ensure that staff have the guidance they need to support people.

People told us that they liked staff, and we observed some kind relaxed interactions between staff and people. However, care plans and positive behaviour plans were not in place to guide staff on the actions that they should take to minimise distress and discomfort. Relatives described staff working intuitively but not always consistently or in line with the care plans. This was reflected in the findings of a recent investigation, which was initiated by the provider, where staff did not follow the providers procedures when there was an accident.

The provider provided staff with mandatory training and regular supervision. There was evidence of staff performance being monitored when things went wrong and we saw an example of staff member being acknowledged and rewarded when they had performed well. However, there was a lack of evidence to demonstrate that staff were supported with additional learning to develop their skills to enable them to deliver consistent person-centred care. The provider told us that they planned to undertake further work with staff to reflect on practice and raise competency.