Services for care homes

Care Home Quality Visits are where a small team from Evolving Communities go into care homes to hear and see the quality of the service. It is usually a one-off snapshot or ‘moment in time’, although follow up visits can be arranged.

The team:

• Collect the views of residents living at the care home (permanently and temporarily)
• Collect the views of residents’ family and friends
• Observe the nature and quality of services
• Collate evidence-based feedback
• Produce reports for the care home and/or care provider that summarises the feedback and observations. The report will describe what works well for residents as well as making suggestions about how the care home could improve.

They can also develop insights and recommendations across multiple visits or multiple care homes to inform strategic decision making for the care provider.

Evolving Communities have been delivering local Healthwatch services since their inception in 2013. One of the powers of a local Healthwatch is to Enter and View any health and care setting. We have been a trusted partner for the Quality Scrutiny Groups, CQC and Local Authority commissioners in this for over twelve years. In that time, we have built up a robust training and delivery methodology to make sure that we can make a difference to care services and those who use them.

We have brought our extensive knowledge and experience to create a meaningful and collaborative care home quality visit offer that will support care home providers in their journey to outstanding.

Key benefits of Care Home Quality Visits

To support service improvement and help care homes build evidence about the quality of their service by:

• Capturing and reflecting the views of residents who often go unheard, for example, care home residents.
• Offering service users an independent, trusted party (lay person) with whom they feel comfortable sharing experiences.
• Supporting anonymity so that residents, their families and friends are confident in speaking up.
• Capturing the thoughts and experiences of staff.
• Engaging residents, family and friends, and staff.
• Asking core questions about the quality of the service.
• Identifying and sharing ‘best practice’.
• Identifying realistic steps that can be taken to improve the service and residents’ experience.
• The opportunity to focus the visit on particular aspects of the service that will help the care home make decisions about service plans and service delivery.
• Supporting providers to get an independent view on the quality of the service in readiness for a CQC inspection.
• We can design question sets that link to CQC’s Statements so that you can easily align your evidence to the CQC framework.

Consultation

We know that change can be difficult for people receiving care services as well as staff delivering that care. If you are considering making any changes to your service, then we can help you understand the views, concerns and aspirations of your residents and staff.

Our independence and guarantee of anonymity means that people can talk to us with confidence. We listen without judgement.

We offer:

• Surveys
• Interviews
• Focus groups

We will work with you to define the scope of our engagement. It could be a whole service review or an in depth look at any aspect of your service.

Our impartial analysis gives you positive and practical ways forward for your business. Because we are independent and take a ‘bottom up’ approach to understanding customers and staff, our findings are a valuable tool for you to bring your residents and staff with you as you make any changes.