Enter and View: Care Homes.
Mandated by the Health and Social Care Act 2012, the visits enable trained Healthwatch staff and volunteers (Authorised Representatives) to visit health and care services - such as hospitals, care homes, GP practices, dental surgeries, and pharmacies.
The last few years have been a real challenge for care homes across England with care home residents being one of the most at high-risk groups to catch Covid-19. Now that we have moved beyond the pandemic to living with Covid-19, it has become safe to allow visitors into care homes once again. The purpose of this visit was multifaceted. Healthwatch Hammersmith & Fulham were led by Hammersmith and Fulham borough priorities as well as the recent CQC inspection rating of “Requires improvement”.
The focus of our visit was to ask residents about their overall experience of living in a care home as well as how involved they and their family members are in planning their care. We also wanted to find out whether the care is tailored to individual needs such as cultural and religious beliefs, and if it is delivered in a way that is easy for all residents and their families to understand.
From the staff perspective, we wanted to find out about dementia friendly training, End-of-Life Care, management of services, staffing, and working with healthcare providers.
As standard we also RAG rate care homes against the Accessible Information Standard (https://www.cqc.org.uk/guidance-providers/meeting-accessible-informatio…).
For more, please read our reports below.
