Care Homes’ Very Healthy Rating Following “Room For Improvement” Inspection
A specialist nursing and residential care home in Bishop Auckland which was recently told it had “room for improvement” has now received the highest possible accolade from its regulating body.
Last November, following an unplanned inspection, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) ruled that Bowes Court in Evenwood was found to be rated good in categories regarding the safe, effective, caring and responsive operations of the home but was deemed to have room for improvement in how it was managed.
Now however, the CQC has now rated Bowes Court as “good” in safe, effective and well led and “outstanding” in caring.
Bowes Court is operated by Careline Lifestyles, an independent provider of high quality nursing and residential care, specialising in acquired brain injuries, neurological, mental health needs, learning and physical disabilities for adults. They also provide nursing, residential and social care for the elderly in their 10 homes spanning an area from Teesside to North Northumberland.
Manager of Bowes Court, Katherine Swainston was delighted with the new rating.
“We were very disappointed to get last year’s rating but we’ve worked hard to turn things around in a very short time. It’s very unusual for a care facility such as ours to get an outstanding rating but we’ve an excellent team and everyone has pulled together. We treat everyone staying with us as if they are our family and that includes their visitors too. Our level of care is high and we also like to add special little personal touches to make the quality of life as good as possible for our service users.”
Indeed, Katherine and her team have organised parties for birthdays and special occasions such as Mother’s Day or simply held a quiet afternoon tea where families can spend quality time together.
Cutting edge systems have been put in place to increase supervision including a new appraisal system, staff training and internal promotions which have achieved amazing results for the service users who are cared for at Bowes Court.
“This hasn’t simply been a paper based exercise,” said Katherine. “Everything we’ve done and implemented in the last twelve months has been done to improve the quality of care in Bowes Court. We’ve taken part in training courses, gained additional qualifications and appointed one of our carers as a training officer to help spread best practice throughout the other homes in our group.”
Chief Executive Officer of Careline Lifestyles, Rahul Sharma who is based in their Newcastle head office said:
“We are constantly striving to improve the quality of care for the people who we support. We share good practice across our organisation and we are hopeful the work we do will be recognised as ‘Outstanding’ in our other homes too. I’m delighted that Katherine and her team have turned around a disappointing review into a rating to be proud of.”
Bowes Court currently has 18 service users and a staff of around 40. It specialises in helping people with brain injuries, complex clinical issues and learning disabilities.
