Nightingale Hammerson, a charity with a proven track record of innovating residential care to enhance the lives of residents, is delighted to announce that it has been awarded the Jewish community’s first-ever overall ‘Outstanding’ rating for its South London residential care home for older people. The rating by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) elevates the charity’s Wandsworth home, Nightingale House – the largest individual residential care home in the UK – to the top 1% of care homes nationwide. In addition to its ‘Outstanding’ rating, the home also received ‘Outstanding’ in three individual categories: for being Caring, Well Led, and Responsive.
In its response to its review, the CQC said:
“We received extremely positive feedback about the standard of care provided at the home from people living there and their visiting relatives and professional health and social care representatives.” Paying tribute to the caring environment, inspectors said that, “staff consistently demonstrated warmth, respect and empathy in their interactions with people and their relatives”, concluding that “people were supported to do as much as they could and wanted to do themselves to retain control and independence over their lives”.
Commenting on the rating, Helen Simmons, Nightingale Hammerson’s Chief Executive, said:
“This is a great testament to the devotion, care and dedication that our team offers all year round. We are immensely proud to have been recognised for providing such a stimulating, nurturing environment where every person is treated as an individual. Person-centred care is at the heart of our ethos – that CQC has acknowledged this is a tribute to our care staff, activities and therapy teams which provide excellent holistic care for each individual. What it comes down to is that we really care and that is the Nightingale Hammerson difference.”
Melvin Lawson, Chairman of Nightingale Hammerson, added:
“Nightingale is focused on creating and maintaining world-class centres of excellence. We strive to be the gold standard for what residential care homes should be. We are immensely grateful to our team and volunteers, and all our supporters who enable us to make our ambitions a reality. They, our amazing professional leadership and wonderful, caring staff, are the reasons that our residential care homes are the places where generations of Jewish families have chosen to live.”
Amongst Nightingale House’s innovations recognised by CQC inspectors was the launch of the UK’s first permanent on-site nursery in a care home, bringing children, their parents and older people together daily to participate in shared social activities, such as baking, storytelling and singing. Feedback from relatives highlighted the initiative as something to be “highly commended”. Inspectors agreed, as they concluded “it was evident by the amount of laughter, smiles and hand-holding going on between the children from the nursery and the people living in the home that they knew each other well and really enjoyed one another’s company”.
Highlighting the home’s commitment to person-centred and innovative care, “which enabled people to live active and fulfilling lives”, inspectors concluded that the Jewish ethos of the home not only allowed staff and volunteers to provide culturally-sensitive care and support to residents and their families, but also helped the home and its residents maintain its strong links to the wider Jewish community. This was echoed by residents’ feedback to the CQC, one of whom is quoted as saying: “The bonus for us is that this is a Jewish home, so our faith which is really important to us as a family, is very much supported and celebrated here.”
A nurse whose feedback was included in the report said:
“I think it’s the best care home and group of staff I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with… the staff clearly care about the residents.”
In addition to Nightingale House, the charity is currently undertaking a major redevelopment of Hammerson House in North London, due to reopen in 2020, which will enable Nightingale Hammerson to extend the outstanding person centred care it offers to the Jewish community to over 300 residents across its two homes.
- A copy of the report is available at: https://www.cqc.org.uk/sites/default/files/new_reports/INS2-2679722673.pdf
