The Old Vicarage

On this page

• Overview
• Shared direction and culture
• Capable, compassionate and inclusive leaders
• Freedom to speak up
• Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion
• Governance, management and sustainability
• Partnerships and communities
• Learning, improvement and innovation

The provider had robust quality monitoring processes in place, this had a very positive impact on the way people received their care. There was excellent oversight of the service. The ethos of the provider was to support people to achieve a high quality life.

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

Staff we spoke with had an exceptionally positive attitude towards the people they supported, their colleagues and the provider’s ethos and values for the service. Staff told us they enjoyed working at the service and gave numerous examples of how the culture of the service had a very positive effect on the people who lived there. One member of staff said the direction and culture of the service was, “Helping to support individuals to lead a full life and achieve goals. [Provider] does update videos each week on You Tube for people, staff and relatives, to show individuals achieving their goals.” The member of staff felt this worked really well to celebrate people's achievements with both staff and people's relatives.

The provider’s values were regularly discussed with staff at team meetings and one to ones. There were posters around the service promoting the provider’s motto of ‘One team’ with information showing what different staff roles were. Staff received a comprehensive training program and mentors were in place to support staff. The providers positive behaviour support team worked across all the provider’s sites to support staff reduce people’s anxieties by looking at incidents and debriefing staff to help them understand how to continually improve people’s care. We were given numerous examples documented elsewhere in this report to show the positive outcomes for people of this team's work with staff. The provider had a central hub where a wide range of activities were available to people who lived at all their services to allow people to socialise together safely.

Staff told us the managers at the service were approachable and open. One member of staff said, “Yes, the managers are very approachable and they would want things raised to them to make sure things are right.” Another member of staff said, “Yes, we have got an assistant manager and registered manager we can talk to them, we can send emails and we have insight partners and they can be contacted at the office or at the service.” Staff told us there were staff meetings and these were held regularly so all staff got a chance to attend and make their views known. Staff felt they were listened to by their managers and their ideas or concerns were taken seriously and used to continually improve the care of people living at the service,

There were a number of effective ways staff were able to discuss issues with the management team both at the service and at the provider hub. Staff were supported with regular supervisions and staff meetings. The provider had introduced a system called ‘raise it’ where staff submitted a raise it form to highlight anything they wanted addressing. This could be anything from concerns or praise about operational, environmental or personal issues. The provider’s human resources team initially dealt with the forms and made sure they were sent to the right staff to deal with any issues raised. Staff were supported with de-briefing meetings to review actions and look how things could be improved and how staff could be further supported.

We did not look at Workforce equality, diversity and inclusion during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Well-led.

Both staff and managers were positive about the different governance and assurances processes used to monitor and improve the care for the people they supported. The assistant manager gave a very clear example of how the quality monitoring processes supported positive changes in the way staff worked. They said, “Not that long ago we had a lot of (medicines) errors and the medicines team were shadowing the medicine rounds. They identified things that needed change, this resulted in the changes to the shared role of medicine leads and shift leads. This has had a positive effect on reducing the errors and on staff well-being.” The registered manager also told us how some quality monitoring processes were undertaken by the provider’s central quality monitoring teams or the PBS team. They felt this meant there was always an impartial eye on the way staff worked. They felt the feedback from these teams was really beneficial for the service and had resulted in a number of positive outcomes we have reported on elsewhere in this report.

The provider had robust quality monitoring processes in place to maintain the quality of care people at the service received. They used central teams of staff to support the registered manager in different areas of quality monitoring, this included areas such as maintaining the environment, management of medicines, staffing and people’s care records. This combined approach was used effectively by staff to give the provider an excellent oversight of the service. Managers on site would also undertake regular walk rounds and weekly audits of the environment and feedback any day to day issues to the provider’s central maintenance team. This ensured the environment was very well maintained. Regular meetings with the site managers and the provider’s positive behavioural team meant information gathered on site around people’s behaviours were regularly reviewed and acted upon. This meant strategies were continually developed to support people and reduce their anxieties. For example, careful and consistent monitoring of a person, who when they first went to live at the service, had many incidences of anxiety which affected their day to day life, had resulted in a significant reduction in episodes of anxiety. Through staff using consistent approaches when providing care for the person, based on the information and strategies the positive behavioural support team had developed, the person had been able to engage in more social activities each day and improve their well being. This showed the management team on site used these monitoring processes effectively to ensure high quality outcomes for the people they supported.

We did not look at Partnerships and communities during this assessment. The score for this quality statement is based on the previous rating for Well-led.

Both staff and managers were extremely positive about the way improvements and learning was cascaded to the teams and how this had a positive effect on the staff group. Staff told us they were supported to learn and improve the care they provided for people with targeted learning for particular areas of care for individuals This complimented the robust training they already received both on induction and throughout their employment. Staff were encouraged to develop their skills within the company to support personal progression. One member of staff told us they had enjoyed their role and had been supported to undertake a mentoring role for new staff, which they very much enjoyed.

There were excellent processes in place to support learning, improvement and innovation at the service. The provider used a number of different innovative technologies to support people such as the ‘smart technology’ mentioned in the person centred care section. The provider’s positive behaviour support team continually looked at ways to support staff learning to improve people’s life experiences.