Celebrations as Fitzwarren House classed ‘outstanding’

Staff and residents at MHA Fitzwarren House are celebrating after inspectors declared the care and support to be 'outstanding'.

The Care Quality Commission visited the Swindon-based nursing and specialist dementia care home in October and looked at how caring, safe, well led, responsive and effective the home was.

They concluded the home was providing 'outstanding' care to its 64 residents.

Fitzwarren House is run by older person’s charity MHA which provides care, accommodation and support to more than 18,200 people across England Scotland and Wales. The home is the fourth of MHA's homes to be classed as 'outstanding'. Overall, 91 per cent of the charity’s care services inspected by regulators are classed as outstanding or good.

In their report, CQC inspectors said: "Staff were highly skilled and had a natural aptitude to give reassurance and comfort to people living in the home. They treated people with the utmost dignity and respect when helping them with daily living tasks. There was an excellent understanding of seeing each person as an individual with their own specific needs."

Manager Sue Smith was praised by the inspectors for being 'extremely passionate about delivering very high standards of care'.

Sue said: "We are thrilled and delighted to be classed as being an outstanding nursing and dementia care home. The report really demonstrates what we see on a daily basis at Fitzwarren House of our staff and volunteers caring for our residents and making sure they can live life to the full with our support."

Other highlights in the inspection report include:

• The home having innovative ways of meeting people's emotional needs and wellbeing, including the provision of a music therapist for people
• Residents and their families, without exception, giving consistent positive feedback
• People were very much part of the local community as the home had forged links with them for the benefit of the residents.

MHA's Director of Care Homes Linda Zaidi said: "All the staff at Fitzwarren House should be proud of this report. At MHA we pride ourselves on providing high quality, personalised care for all our residents and the inspectors certainly saw this in abundance at the home.

"It is becoming increasingly harder for homes to be awarded an outstanding inspection report, especially for nursing homes, so this report is testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone at Fitzwarren House."

The inspection report can be read on the CQC's website.