Evaluating Care Homes SUMMARY Report of all Enter and View visits June 2017 – March 2018 Programme

Healthwatch Salford published an evaluation of Enter and View visits undertaken in the period June 2017 to March 2018.  During this period they visited 15 homes.

Each home was evaluated against eight quality indicators: strong, visible management; staff with the time and skills to do their jobs; good knowledge of each individual resident and how their needs may be changing; a varied programme of activities; quality, choice and flexibility around food and mealtimes; ensuring residents can regularly see health professionals such as GPs, dentists, opticians or chiropodists; accommodating residents’ personal, cultural and lifestyle needs; and being an open environment where feedback is actively sought and used. 

Findings

Practice and standards varied and were often inconsistent across the different homes, but this was not surprising when factoring in staffing issues and turnover of managers, with at least 7 out of the 16 homes having different managers from the time Healthwatch Salford started this project back in June and had identified the registered managers to contact. It became clear to Healthwatch Salford that effective, caring and responsive managers make all the difference, whether new or in post for many years, and often expect, manage and support care home staff to demonstrate these qualities too, with positive impacts on quality of care.

The Enter and View programme is a challenging, but ultimately constructive, process for home managers to undertake, especially so when there are difficult economic conditions and legislative changes (such as the Care Act 2014) to be accommodated as well. Most home managers eventually gave positive and constructive feedback about the Enter and View process.

Healthwatch Salford has a statutory duty to involve local people in influencing the organisations that affect them and this programme has met this duty through speaking to a total of 82 residents, 66 staff, 18 friends and family members and 16 managers.

Healthwatch Salford also inducted and trained 18 volunteers in the Enter and View process, some of which decided that the role was not something they wanted to do in practice but went onto volunteer in other roles. In total 11 volunteers wanted to get involved as Authorised Reps, 5 of which were able to commit to the dates and times of the visits. 

Recommendations

Across 16 visits there were 87 recommendations made, with corresponding responses from the home.  The themes from these recommendations were:

• Care plans
• Staffing levels
• Staff training and support
• Environment
• Information and accessibility
• Food
• Activities
• Procedure
• Maintenance