London Care (Bristol Court)

On this page

• Overview
• Person-centred Care
• Care provision, Integration and continuity
• Providing Information
• Listening to and involving people
• Equity in access
• Equity in experiences and outcomes
• Planning for the future

People did not always feel they were listened to; or their opinions were valued. People felt that they received good basic care, and some people felt this met their needs and choices. Other people felt there needed to be improvements and for staff to better understand their needs. People enjoyed the independence of living within their own flats. There was a good range of accessible information for people to find out about their care and the service.

This service scored 75 (out of 100) for this area. Find out what we look at when we assess this area and How we calculate these scores.

Most people using the service and their relatives felt that basic care needs were being met. However, some relatives told us the staff did not have the skills to provide good support to people with a learning disability. They told us the lack of understanding sometimes meant staff did not communicate well with people, understand their needs, or provide support which enabled people to do things for themselves. People felt the specialist training staff received had not yet had an impact in the way they were supported. Some people spoke positively about their experiences and told us care was provided in a way which met their needs and reflected their choices. Some of their comments included, ''On the whole, I am happy with care'', ''I really like the way the carers look after me and their attitude, they use my name and I think they have got to know me'' and ''There is good interaction with the carers who are respectful.''

We did not look at Care provision, Integration and continuity during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.

People told us they were provided with a range of information about the service. External professionals who had visited the service told us the provider had information in different formats, including Easy Read documents. We saw some staff wrote things down for people who had hearing impairments, used objects of reference and pictures to help communication with people who needed additional support to understand spoken words. There were displays of information, which included pictorial information.

People and their relatives did not always feel they were listened to or that their comments were taken seriously. Their feedback included, ''It is a nice place to live, however management is not the greatest, communication from management is bad'', ''The communication is very poor, they don’t really follow up on anything'', ''I attend the meetings but they don’t take much notice of what we say. They take minutes but there is no follow up'' and ''Communication is a fundamental problem here.'' The provider had a system where they spoke with people individually every 3 months to gather their feedback about the service. However, we noted that some people had not engaged with this process when approached by staff. This meant that if someone declined to comment once, they may not get another opportunity to give their formal feedback until 3 months later. People told us they had experienced that concerns discussed outside of this process had not always been responded to satisfactorily. We discussed this with the management team so they could look at ways to ensure they had a person-centred approach when seeking feedback from people.

We did not look at Equity in access during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.

People and their relatives felt their diverse needs were taken account of and they were able to experience good outcomes in relation to these. Some people gave examples of individual experiences where they felt there had been a lack of understanding of their religion and culture. But most people told us the diversity of the people who lived at the service was respected. There were different religious celebrations and opportunities for people to participate in these. The service catered for people with dementia and people with a learning disability. Whilst some people explained improvements were needed in staff skills and understanding, most people told us there were a range of communal facilities and opportunities designed to meet different needs. This included areas of the building set up to cater for groups of people with similar needs and senior staff allocated to oversee the care of groups of people.

The provider had a range of procedures designed to support people and staff with their diversity needs. The provider aimed to recruit staff to reflect the culture, race and diversity of people using their services. The organisation had reviewed recruitment procedures and given staff and managers training about equality and diversity. They were undertaking work to promote female representation in the senior management team, encourage older workers into employment and develop their apprenticeship schemes.

We did not look at Planning for the future during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Responsive.