Working at Westwood House

No permanent manager in place, so other managers from different services oversee things and staff say it leads to confusing changes.

The service did not have a registered manager at the time of the inspection... One staff member told us, “I don’t think it’s an ideal plan, they are from different services, trying to help, some things they are bringing along don’t really work. They are doing a good job, we have to come in and ask what’s happening now, as there are lots of changes.”

Staff did not always feel supported by leaders during recent tough times with more incidents.

Staff told us that during recent times they had not felt supported by leaders during a time where there were a higher number of incidents at the service. One staff member told us, “That time was really distressing. We feel we were not that supported, [leaders were] telling us to do this and that, but they weren’t looking at our needs.”

Training on handling behaviours of distress is not effective enough, as there have been lots of related safeguarding incidents.

We found there had been a high number of safeguarding incidents at the service regarding supporting people with behaviours of distress. This meant the training available to support staff managing behaviours of distress may not have been effective.