Chase House Limited

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 service 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 inadequate. This meant people were not treated with compassion and staff caring attitudes had significant shortfalls. The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to person-centred care. We identified care was not always planned or delivered to meet individual’s needs and preferences.

This service scored 30 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The service did not always treat people with respect and dignity. The service had displayed personal information about people , which meant passers-by would be aware of their health and care needs. On the first day of our inspection, we overheard a staff member say loudly and in the presence of other people, "[Person] has had an explosion," referring to someone who had experienced incontinence in a communal area. Where people needed to use continence pads, their net fixation pants were not separated and shared with other people. The service had CCTV in use, but there was no signage in place to inform people that there was audio as well as video surveillance. However, we also observed positive interactions, such as staff crouching down to speak to people who were sitting and talking to people kindly. A relative told us, “They (staff) are always respectful to [person].”

The service did not always treat people as individuals or ensure their care, support and treatment met their needs and preferences. Two people's care plans stated they should not consume particular foods for religious reasons. However, records showed they had received these foods. The registered manager told us staff had incorrectly documented what they had eaten and that these people's families had stated they could eat these foods occasionally. This meant their care plans did not accurately reflect their religious and cultural needs in a person-centred way. Not all staff we spoke with knew people’s religious and cultural needs. A person's care plan stated they preferred to be supported with personal care by female staff only, but records showed male staff had supported them.

The service did not always promote people's independence, choice, and control. For example, during meals, people were not offered choices such as flavour of squash, if they wanted gravy, and being asked if they wanted clothing protectors before staff put these on them. Several people's records lacked evidence of meaningful activities being offered to them regularly. Furthermore, for some people, staff had documented basic interactions such as greeting them, opening curtains, putting on music, noting they were awake and trimming their nails as an activity. When carrying out structured observations of people's experiences, we observed some people did not receive any interaction from staff and others received minimal task-led interactions such as being offered a drink or given instruction. People's care plans did not always provide information on what activities they liked to do. A person told us, "It's ok here but very boring."

Staff did not always respond to people's needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress. For example, we intervened and sought assistance from staff when we observed a person was looking unwell and bent over in their chair. This person had been left for approximately 30 minutes before our intervention. We had to inform a staff member that a person's floor was wet when they had just gone into this person's room and left without acting on this. We observed a person call for support for 4 minutes, and the staff ignored them until they were offered a biscuit. A person told us, " Sometimes I'll call them (staff), I have my door open, and they are just sitting there, and they ignore me, so I bang my stick on the table, that makes them come, but sometimes I can wait 20 minutes to half an hour."

Although the staff did not raise any concerns about how the service supported their wellbeing, our findings in relation to people being treated with dignity, responding to people's immediate needs and always being offered choices that met their needs and preferences meant staff had not always been effectively enabled to deliver person-centred care.