Enter and view: Bennetts Castle Care Centre, Barking and Dagenham

Healthwatch Barking & Dagenham conducted an Enter and View on Bennets Castle Care Centre, Dagenham, Essex, a privately owned nursing home. The visit was conducted on 27th September 2016. The home has 64 residential rooms and the majority of residents have dementia.

The visit was arranged as Healthwatch was told by relatives who visited the care centre that the quality of care was not always as high as they would have expected and were concerned about the times when they were not there.

Observation by the enter and view representatives reported that:

Overall, representatives were satisfied that the service was meeting the needs of residents for the areas of the service that were enquired into. It was felt that there were some areas of communication with relatives that might be beneficial –some relatives may not be comfortable in discussing issues they see as problems.

Although agency staff were used it was only to cover staff sickness and retention levels for full time staff were better than national averages.

A programme of re-decorating had been planned and was specifically aimed at making the home more dementia freiendly.

Residents and carers were generally happy with the food, care, activities, care plans and staffing levels.

From those that representatives spoke with, the wellbeing of residents was an important part of the service.

Non specific recommenmdations were made.

The provider did give a written response which clarified the use of agency staff and detailed the programme of improvements that were planned