Care Inspectorate Scotland gives generally positive report for Catalina House Care Centre in Alness, Ross-shire
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AN Easter Ross care home for people with mental health problems received a positive report after its latest inspection – although care planning was one of the areas to be improved.
The Care Inspectorate published the results of a review carried out in early September at Catalina House Care Centre in Alness, with results going from “adequate” for leadership and planning of care and support to “good” for staffing, setting and support to people’s well-being.
It scored between three and four out of a maximum of six in the various inspection categories.
The report said: “Staff had a good awareness of people’s needs and how to support people in a way that benefits wellbeing. There were good links with other health professionals and people’s support and health needs were well managed.
“Staff helped each other by being flexible across different roles to cover gaps. Staff knew people well and had good opportunities to have discussion about their work. However there was an over reliance on information being passed on verbally and not recorded, which led to a poor standard of written information in people’s care plans, evaluations and reviews.
"The standard of record keeping needed to improve to ensure a consistent level of support could be provided and to reflect the care and support that people received.
“The service should develop care plans with people, that are in a suitable format to meet their needs. Each care plan should take account of the person’s individual wishes, preferences and needs.
Areas for improvement in leadership were identified as well as developing “robust and transparent” quality assurance processes. These included ways to assess the quality of experiences and outcomes for people using the service, as well as developing a service improvement plan “which is regularly reviewed and supports continuous improvement”.
Residents who were spoken to by inspectors said they felt “safe and protected” at the home, and that “the staff... are very supportive and kind”.
