Hilltop Court Nursing Home

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 requires improvement. At this assessment the rating has remained requires improvement. This meant people did not always feel well-supported, cared for or treated with dignity and respect.

The service was in breach of legal regulation in relation to the systems in place to ensure people were consistently treated with respect and dignity.

This service scored 45 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

The provider did not always treat people with kindness, empathy and compassion, or respect their privacy and dignity. Staff did not always treat colleagues from other organisations with kindness and respect.

We found that people were not always being treated with compassion and dignity. We found shortfalls in the provision of personal and oral care and people appeared very unkempt. People were seen in dirty or ill-fitting clothing and several people had no form of footwear on. It was not evident within people’s care plans how these matters were being effectively managed. We observed some staff were kind and caring with people, but other staff were busy, task focused and did not engage with people. However, one professional told us, “I have always witnessed staff being caring and treating people with respect and dignity.”

The provider did not always treat people as individuals or make sure people’s care, support and treatment met people’s needs and preferences. They did not always take account of people’s strengths, abilities, aspirations, culture and unique backgrounds and protected characteristics.

People were not consistently treated as individuals by staff. People were not free to walk around the home as areas of corridor and the dining area were locked after use. Care was not personalised to the individual, for example, everyone was given a clothes protector at mealtimes and had the same biscuits as a snack during the mid-morning. Feedback from families and professionals raised concerns about a lack of opportunity to engage with people. One professional commented, “I do not notice much interaction between staff and residents, particularly on the male unit where there appears to be very little stimulation. Despite sometimes there being a high presence of staff, it is not often you see staff engaging with residents and often they may just be sat observing.”

The provider did not always promote people’s independence, so people did not always know their rights and have choice and control over their own care, treatment and wellbeing.

People had mixed experience of how choice was promoted. We observed some instances were staff encouraged people to make choices about where they sat and what they ate, but this was not consistently the case for everyone. Care plans contained some information about what people needed support with, but this was not always implemented in practice. For example, where people needed encouragement and prompting to take a good diet and fluids we did not observe this was always given.

The provider did not always listen to and understand people’s needs, views and wishes. Staff did not always respond to people’s needs in the moment or act to minimise any discomfort, concern or distress.

People’s needs were not always responded to in a timely way. We observed occasions where staff did not respond to people who were asking for support. Care records did not demonstrate how refusals of care were followed up. For example, where a person had declined oral care it was not evident that this care was followed up over the course of the day.

The provider did not always care about and promote the wellbeing of their staff. They did not always support or enable staff to deliver person-centred care.

Feedback from staff was that the morale within the service was poor and staff told us they were not always able to take their allocated breaks. Feedback from staff about how they were supported by the home manager and provider was mixed, with some staff feeling well supported, and others feeling unable to raise concerns or that they were well treated consistently, the same as other team members.