Heritage Care Place

On this page

• 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

Effective – this means we looked for evidence that people’s care, treatment and support achieved good outcomes and promoted a good quality of life, based on best available evidence. At this assessment we rated this key question requires improvement. This meant people’s outcomes were consistently good, and people’s feedback confirmed this.

This service scored 67 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

People told us care staff were knowledgeable and understood their needs. A person said, “The carers do good training. They know about my needs and go to great lengths to explain things to me.”

People had been involved in the care planning process. A care needs assessment had been carried out before people received care from the agency.

Overall people were satisfied with the way they received care and support from care staff. They commented positively on the competence of care staff.

However, we found care records did not always contain sufficient detail to guide staff in how to provide best practice care. Care plans and risk assessments in place did not provide staff with clear information regarding people’s particular healthcare needs. This placed people and staff at potential risk of harm.

Management shadowed new care staff supported them to learn how to follow best practice.

Staff spoke positively about the support they received from their colleagues and management.

Team meetings and supervisions took place on a regular basis. Staff said they found these supportive. Staff told us they were supported in their work and felt valued working at the service.

Systems were in place to help keep staff informed of changes within the service. This was done through messages and meetings.

People's records and risk assessments did not always include clear guidance and key information to enable staff to always deliver the right and consistent support people needed to live a healthier life. Improvements were required to ensure care records and risk assessments were informative about people’s health needs and included details of how risks to people associated with their medical conditions and health were to be mitigated and reduced .

Staff recorded their visits on daily notes. We looked at a sample of these and found care staff ticked boxes to confirm which tasks had been completed. However, we found that they did not maintain detailed contemporaneous notes and did not provide comprehensive information about the person’s wellbeing. The lack of detail recorded in daily notes made it difficult to monitor people’s progress. We discussed this with management and they advised they would change the format of daily notes records so that staff could record details clearly. Following the site visit, the service sent us evidence of the new format and confirmed that they would hold a meeting to discuss the changes with staff.

Outcomes were set for people in their care plans. These detailed how people wanted to be supported to achieve their goals and outcomes.

People were supported to consent to their care and treatment where possible.

Staff had completed Mental Capacity Act (MCA) training. Staff were aware of the importance of giving people time to make their own decisions where possible. Management was aware of the importance of making decisions in people’s best interests and not imposing unnecessary restrictions on people.