Enter and view: Arran Manor Residential Care Home, Havering

Healthwatch Havering conducted an Enter and View visit to Arran Manor, on 27th September, 2016 as part of their aim to visit all health and social care facilities in the borough, to ensure that all services delivered are acceptable and the safety of the residents is not compromised in any way.

Arran Manor is a residential care home that caters to the elderly people, including those with dementia or a sensory impairment. At the time of the visit, there 11 residents subject to DoLS.

The team were met by the Care Officer and the one of the joint owners and the Manager. The communal rooms were attractively decorated and clean, the bathrooms and toilets were clean and modern, and the kitchen had a high standard of cleanliness and had plentiful supply of fresh produce and well stocked larders. Being a residential care home there was no registered nurse, but the team were told the staff are NVQ level 5 qualified, and there is training offered in-house.

In an emergency, a senior member of staff decides whether to call 999 especially as recently there had been several incidents of the same resident, who has very specific medical needs, who repeatedly fell down. These incidents are recorded on the internal CCTV system also. Since then the problem has been resolved.

HW team were informed that the District Nurses monitored palliative care and had a body map for End of Life care.

The home has a daily structured but flexible activities programme, which is displayed on the residents’ notice board for everyone to see. Staff meetings were held monthly and the Manager has an open-door policy. Risk assessments was reviewed annually and changed if circumstances so required.

All the residents spoken to said they were happy at the home.

HW Havering only had the following recommendation:

As contrasting colours in areas such as corridors are beneficial to elderly people, especially those who live with dementia, it could help if residents’ bedroom doors could be personalised by adding name plates or other items of personal identity, both to increase their sense of belonging and to aid identification when returning to their rooms.

There was no response from the service provider.