Healthwatch Sees Highcliffe Getting It Right

Inspectors from Healthwatch Sunderland recently visited Highcliffe Care Home and came away impressed with the quality of care and overall lifestyle. The ‘Care Home Life – What it’s really like!’ visit effectively captures the resident experience in their own terms.

Healthwatch Sunderland is the independent local champion for people who use health and social care services, making sure that those running services put people at the heart of care. By speaking directly to the residents and using a questionnaire they aim to understand their needs, experiences and concerns of accessing and using local health and social care services, and to then work with providers to ensure they get things right.

Healthwatch assesses against 9 indicators that focus specifically on issues of quality, such as how much residents and family can have a say in how a home is run, and whether residents are able to pursue their hobbies, etc. The indicators are:

1. A strong visible management
2. Staff with time and skills to do their jobs
3. Good knowledge of each individual resident and how their needs may be changing
4. A varied programme of activities
5. Quality, choice and flexibility around food and mealtimes
6. Ensuring residents can regularly see health professionals such as GPs, dentists, opticians, chiropodists, audiologists etc.
7. Accommodate resident’s personal, cultural and lifestyle needs
8. Provide an open environment where feedback is actively sought and used
9. Provide a physical environment which is suitable for the needs of the residents

With no neutral comments, let alone any negative comments, all the feedback from all the residents agreed that our home and staff delivered against the 9 indicators with a clean sweep of positive scores throughout. Residents’ relatives and family were equally clear in their praise and support for the home, along with staff who took part in the survey too. This builds upon our last Healthwatch report from 2017 too.

Our full report with all the wonderful quotes from residents, relatives and staff is available on the Healthwatch website.

Maria Booth, Regional Manager for Avery Healthcare that operates Highcliffe, was also fulsome in her praise, “The whole team at Highcliffe do a fantastic job to not only provide first class care to our residents but also ensure that their well-being is supported through an active and engaging lifestyle, whatever their capacity. It’s great that an independent body such as Healthwatch Sunderland has concluded the same.”