Enter & View visit to Ensham House Extra Care Housing Scheme for Older People
What we did
Visiting Extra Care housing schemes continues to be a strategic priority of the use of our Enter and View powers, as it is often the case that tenants of such schemes have fewer chances to express their views in comparison to people using other health or social care schemes.
The purpose of Extra Care Schemes is to combine the advantages of independent living with the provision of co-ordinated onsite care to cover a wide range of essential care needs.
Admission to Extra Care schemes is limited to Wandsworth residents aged 55 or over who need more than 10 hours of care a week.
Ensham House operates on the basis of care plans provided by Social Services and a needs/risk assessment by the Care Manager.
The highest number of daily care visits is 5, equating to up to 16 hours a week.
The more independent tenants manage their own personal care, shopping and meals but need help with medication, housework and paperwork.
We aimed to use observations and interviews with tenants during our visit at Ensham House on 8th December 2015 to report on tenants’ views of the quality of care.
In total we spoke to 13 tenants, 2 of which were partners of people who needed a care package.
Key Findings
The feedback from tenants was generally positive, particularly regarding personal care, whereby many tenants felt carers were supportive and treated tenants with dignity and respect.
Tenants also spoke positively of food shopping arrangements, as well as the communal coffee mornings and weekly fish and chip supper.
The element of independent living was viewed as favourable in comparison to tenants’ past experiences in residential care and sheltered housing.
However, there was some negative feedback from a few tenants including:
- Staff shortage and consequent poor timekeeping by carers.
- Inadequate staff training with equipment for tenants with high need.
- Limited scope of social activities, even more so for tenants with limited mobility.
- Limitations in access to healthcare.
- Inappropriate accommodation for tenants with limited mobility and maintenance issues.
Our recommendations
Overall, the views we collected were mixed, as might be anticipated due to the varied level of need and complex experiences among tenants. Therefore, we recommend that the following areas are reviewed:
- London Care should discuss with service commissioners the appropriate resources needed to keep pace with the actual dependency levels of tenants.
- London Care should consider the development of a ‘key worker’ system, in the first instance for people with high dependency needs, to improve continuity of care and the monitoring of support needs and enable a rapid response if a care package is no longer sufficient for a person’s needs.
- As well as meeting their contractual targets for care, staff should be given the time and training to talk to people and encourage them to identify any additional help that would enable them to organise aspects of their lives beyond the basics of physical care and needs, and so improve their feelings of well-being and independence. A keyworker scheme would encourage this approach.
- Managers should ensure that calls for assistance, whether urgent or non-urgent, are responded to promptly and that a regular system of auditing this is established.
- To complement the programme of social activities, we suggest that help should be given to anyone who would like to pursue hobbies and interests they enjoyed before settling in Ensham House.
- Tenants with limited mobility who would prefer more control over their shopping should be given access to schemes such as that offered by Age UK for online shopping, or by Wandsworth Community Transport’s Shop Mobility scheme.
What happens next
We shared the report with the managers of Ensham House from Veridian Housing and London Care. They have sent a response to our recommendations, which you can read below.
We also shared the report with Wandsworth Adult Social Services and we will continue to follow how they may develop the Extra Care Scheme model of care based on what tenents have told us.
Download the reports here
If you need this report in a different format, please e-mail
enquiries@healthwatchwandsworth.co.uk or call 020 8516 7767
