Whitestones Care Home – Enter and View Visit Report
Whitestones is a residential home supporting people who are living with dementia. The home provides 36 long-term care beds including one double room for long term care residents who are part of a couple, three short-term beds and two beds for those requiring re-ablement.
The purpose of the visit was to:-
- To enable Healthwatch Derbyshire ARs to see for themselves how the service is being provided in terms of quality of life and quality of care principles
- To ascertain how respite care services are organised and identify implications for the service and users following the closure of respite care beds at the Ecclefold Resource Centre
- To capture the views and experiences of residents, family members/friends and staff
- To consider the practical experience of family/friends when visiting the service in terms of access, parking and other visitor facilities
- To identify areas of resident satisfaction, good practice within the service and any areas felt to be in need of improvement
- To support DCC Direct Care Services internal quality audit system.
The strategic drivers for this visit were:-
1. The Derbyshire County Council decision in November 2015 to close the short-term care beds at Ecclesfold Resource Centre, Chapel-en-le-Frith and reassign 3 short term care beds to Whitestones. This reassignment formed an alternative option, along with two other existing homes in the locality, for users of the Ecclesfold short-term care provision to obtain continuity of their short-term care needs.
Healthwatch Derbyshire was contacted by relatives prior to the bed closure at Ecclesfold Resource Centre earlier this year, who felt strongly that their loved one’s well-being would be compromised if respite/short-term care was taken up at Whitestones. Healthwatch Derbyshire took on board the concerns expressed to them and following their organisational procedures, approved an unannounced Enter & View visit to take place.
2. Over and above the preceding ‘driver’, during 2016/2017, Healthwatch Derbyshire has been commissioned by DCC to conduct a range of unannounced visits to their residential services across the county. The service profile and range includes 22 services supporting older persons and four services supporting people who have learning difficulties. Whitestones Care Home represents one of these services and
therefore the rationale for the Enter & View visit arranged represented the combination of both of these ‘drivers’.