The White House Care Home

Updated 12 February 2021

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008.

As part of CQC’s response to care homes with outbreaks of coronavirus, we are conducting reviews to ensure that the Infection Prevention and Control practice was safe and the service was compliant with IPC measures. This was a targeted inspection looking at the IPC practices the provider has in place.

This inspection took place on 28 January 2021 and was announced.

Updated 12 February 2021

About the service

The White House Care Home is a residential care home providing personal care to 26 older people at the time of the inspection. The service is situated within, and well connected to, a residential area of Hartburn in Stockton-on-Tees. It can support up to 27 people in one adapted building, across two floors. People had different health and care needs and some were living with dementia.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

People’s experience of using the service was extremely positive and, in many aspects, exceptional. Consistently positive feedback from people and relatives, as well as highly complimentary feedback from professionals about the service confirmed this. A relative commented, “They [my relative] are very safe here, they [staff] look after my relative so well and love them to bits. They know them better than we do.”

People’s needs and a dedication by staff to understand the impact that high standards of care had on improving people’s quality of life were at the heart of the service. What made the service exceptional was a distinctive drive to not just achieve particularly positive outcomes for people using the service; sharing of learning and excellent best practice highly commended by health and social care professionals meant the service also made a difference to the lives of people in the wider community.

The service was continuously developing their already excellent activities programme. This had significantly improved people’s quality of life, self-esteem and meaningful connections with others living at the service and within the community. The service captured and celebrated people’s visible enjoyment, achievements and involvement in short films, including visual ‘news bulletins’. These videos were shared with people and their relatives, who were actively involved in the service and its development. This innovative approach helped the service to share and reflect on people’s positive experiences and how these made a difference to their lives. The benefits and positive impact of this was evident in people’s heartfelt laughs and smiles, as they joined in with and led on activities. In addition, and to support this further, there was a strong focus on developing increasingly detailed individual care plans to underpin truly person-centred care.

The service's leadership was highly distinctive. Managers had a strong focus on continuous development, innovation and working in partnership with others. Their positivity was summarised with an outlook that increasingly strong collaboration with stakeholders meant for them there had “never been a better time to work in the field of care.” Managers were praised by stakeholders for being inspirational role-models for other services to follow in their aim to provide outstanding care. We discussed with managers a few areas of record-keeping to be reviewed to develop this further.

Staff felt well supported. Feedback was consistent that there were enough staff and people did not have to wait long to be helped when they needed support. People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this service was good (published 23 May 2017).

Why we inspected

This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating. We checked to see whether the service had sustained its good rating and found it had improved to outstanding.

Follow up

We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.