Elizabeth House

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• 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

We assessed one quality statement in this key question. We have used the rating from the previous assessment to help calculate the overall rating of this key question. At this assessment we found people were not always supported to have a pleasant mealtime experience and there was mixed feedback about the food.

This service scored 71 (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.

People had mixed feedback about the food. One person said, “I can’t grumble. I think it’s alright. There’s not a big choice but it’s edible.” Another person told us, “I occasionally get choices. I’m not keen on the food. I get given sandwiches in the evening, but I do not like to have them more than once or twice a week. There’s no variety. There should be more choice.” One person said, “The food is not bad, but it had gone off a bit the last month. It is the meat; I think they’re using cheap meat as it’s tough which is disappointing, and I don’t like that sort of thing. There is not much choice.” Whereas another person said, “It’s nice. They give a choice – there’s always something to choose.” Another person also commented the food was ‘very nice’.

Staff did not have any feedback to share about Delivering evidence-based care.

Effective processes were not in place to ensure mealtimes were a positive experience, based on best practice. The lunch time experience continued to be, despite feedback from the local authority, a chaotic and not always communal experience for people. People who were sitting together got their food at different times so 1 person had finished their meal before the person they were sitting with at the same table had been served theirs. Throughout the day, staff were very task oriented which did not always lead to caring or thoughtful conversations with people, although staff were generally polite in their approach. Following the inspection the provider informed us all staff had received training to help improve their approach. During lunch time we observed staff putting aprons on 2 people. However, the staff did not offer people the choice whether they wished to wear an apron or not. The provider informed us mealtime experience audits and management oversight of mealtimes to monitor people’s experience had been introduced since the inspection. We will check improvements have been made at our next inspection. We observed 1 person being intimate with themselves in a communal area and no staff tried to distract the person or help maintain their dignity with a blanket, for example. We observed staff supported multiple people at the same time to eat and were also inputting information into the electronic tablet where people’s daily care was recorded, and not interacting with people, which was not caring or dignified. A staff member challenged other staff about this but the response from them was not positive, and people continued to be supported by only 1 staff member.

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.

We did not look at Supporting people to live healthier lives during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Monitoring and improving outcomes during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.

We did not look at Consent to care and treatment during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Effective.