Healthwatch Rochdale publishes findings and recommendations after visit at Highfield Manor Care Home

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Highfield Manor Residential Care Home, 70 Manchester Road, Heywood

Healthwatch Rochdale, has published a report today, 18 January 2019, containing seven recommendations for improvement after carrying out an Enter and View visit at Highfield Manor Residential Care Home, Heywood.

This was the second scheduled visit to the home after the first needed to be suspended on arrival due to lack of availability of the manager.

The visit to Highfield Manor is the seventh home to take part in Healthwatch Rochdale’s Enter and View programme at local care homes.

The programme is based on eight care quality indicators developed by Independent Age which are used to help identify good quality of care in residential and nursing homes.

Areas of improvement were identified at Highfield Manor on six of the indicators with seven recommendations being made. Of those recommendations, four were for dementia friendly improvements to be made to the home environment.

Recommendations for improvement included:

• To display the name of the occupying resident on the bedroom door
• To have different coloured bedroom doors to make the home more dementia friendly
• To provide a range of multi-sensory activities to stimulate smell, sight, vision, touch and hearing 
• Having an accessible picture board of food choices displayed in the dining area so that residents know what food options are available
• Having a ‘you said we did’ board to demonstrate how resident and staff feedback can make a positive difference

Kate Jones, Chief Executive Officer, said: “We noticed some residents at Highfield Manor displaying challenging behaviour, but we observed that they were treated with patience, care and dignity by the staff.

“We did identify some areas for improvement which mainly concerned making the environment of the home more dementia friendly to improve the experience for residents who live there. 

“It was disappointing to have received no response from Highfield Manor regarding our recommendations despite numerous attempts and even delaying the publishing of the report to allow them more time to respond.”

You can read the full report containing details of the findings and recommendations here:

• www.healthwatchrochdale.org.uk/sites/default/files/highfield_manor_enter_and_view_report.pdf

If you require a hard copy please telephone Healthwatch on 01706 249575.