Islington Care Home rated as Outstanding once more by CQC

An Islington Care Home has once more been rated as Outstanding overall by the Care Quality Commission.

Bridgeside Lodge Care Centre, was rated Outstanding for being effective, caring, responsive and well-led. It was rated Good for being safe, following the inspection in September 2017.

Bridgeside Lodge is a residential care home that provides long-term specialist nursing care for up to 64 adults. The home supports elderly people, some of whom have dementia, and younger people, aged 18-65, who have acquired neurological conditions including spinal injuries. At the time of CQC’s inspection there were 58 people living in the home.

CQC inspectors found the care provider, Blackberry Hill Limited, achieved Outstanding care and support for people who live at Bridgeside Lodge. The registered manager, with support from Blackberry Hill’s management team, had worked towards ensuring exceptional and continuously improving standards of care.

Since the previous inspection, Bridgeside Lodge had introduced new progressive ideas and initiatives to create a high quality of life for the people who used the service. These initiatives included the introduction of innovative work aids, such as, an instant tablet computer care planning and recording system, adopting the FISH philosophy, a technique promoting fun at work to make staff alert and active in the workplace and embedding “People Like Me”, an initiative in which staff and people who used the service were encouraged to make positive connections based on shared interests.

The effect of these innovations was that staff spent less time on completing their daily care notes and more time building meaningful and positive relationships with people. Consequently, people said they were feeling happy and safe at the home as staff always had time for them.

External professionals gave CQC consistently positive feedback about the support provided at the home, its management team and the staff who worked there. They said they had enjoyed working in partnership with the home as it always provided exceptional care to all people who used the service and the staff went the extra mile to ensure people’s care needs had been met.

The care and support provided at the home was holistic and enabled staff to meet even the most complex needs of people who used the service.

There was a clear strategic vision from the management team that enabled the home to continuously improve and build significant links with the local community and external health and social care professionals. For example, there was an “end of life” project that aimed at ensuring that people received the right and chosen end of life care.

Staff were well trained and they continuously worked towards improving their knowledge and skills to care for people effectively.

Other partnership initiatives promoted by the home supported people in creating and sustaining positive links with the local community. These included a partnership between Bridgeside Lodge and local nursery schools and the celebration of a recent event, the Regent’s Canal Festival.

Debbie Ivanova, CQC’s Deputy Chief Inspector of Adult Social Care, said:

“Bridgeside Lodge has been able to improve its service even further so that it is now rated outstanding in four of the five CQC domains. There is clear leadership at this service, a dedicated manager and an organisation with clear strategic goals to provide excellent care for people using the service.”

You can read the report in full on our website.

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