Shottermill House

People received safe, personalised care meeting their physical health. Staff also ensured they enabled people to enjoy doing things that supported their psychological, social and spiritual needs. Staff knew how to protect people from the risk of abuse, neglect or avoidable harm. People’s care was planned and coordinated, with other social care and healthcare professionals being involved as and when needed. There were enough appropriately qualified and supported staff to provide timely and safe care to people. People overall received safe support with their medicines. Staff communicated with people well and involved them in their care, asked for choices and treated them as valued individuals. People were supported to do things they loved and live the lifestyle of their choice, in line with their personal values and beliefs. Staff and management were always exceptionally caring and kind, which was unanimously praised by people, their relatives and volunteers supporting the home as the most distinctive attribute of the home. The home was comfortable, accessible for people and well-maintained. Staff followed safe practice in infection prevention and control and worked well as a team to provide consistent care which brought positive outcomes to people. The registered manager ensured lessons learned were implemented following review of accidents, incidents, safeguarding concerns, audits and checks carried out in the home. The management team were approachable, visible and ensured the home’s culture was consistently monitored to align with provider’s values of transparency, compassion, community and excellence. Staff were encouraged to provide their feedback and speak up when they had any concerns. The home worked well with other healthcare and social care services and was involved in their local community. Staff felt supported, valued and treated with respect by the provider. The management team used various opportunities for learning and improvement, for example, by acting on outcomes of the quality and safety checks or working in line with national best practice guidance. However, not all shortfalls around record keeping, for example, in relation to people’s care plans and daily care records, behavioural incidents monitoring, ‘when required’ medicines guidance and records were identified as improvement needs within provider audits. The management team were responsive to our feedback and clarified information in people’s records during the assessment. They also identified actions required to improve recording in the service and started implementing those actions by working with their staff team.