Evenwood care home hailed for major improvements

A CARE home in Evenwood, which was last year told it had “room for improvement”, has now been rated “good” by its regulating body. 

An unplanned inspection by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) in November last year found that Bowes Court was good in categories regarding the safe, effective, caring and responsive operations of the home but was deemed to have room for improvement in how it was managed.

However, the CQC has now rated Bowes Court as “good” in safe, effective and well led and “outstanding” in caring.

The home provides specialist nursing and residential care. Bowes Court manager Katherine Swainston said: "We were very disappointed to get last year’s rating but we’ve worked hard to turn things around in a very short time.

“It’s very unusual for a care facility such as ours to get an outstanding rating but we’ve an excellent team and everyone has pulled together. We treat everyone staying with us as if they are our family and that includes their visitors too.

“Our level of care is high and we also like to add special little personal touches to make the quality of life as good as possible for our service users.”

The care home team have organised parties for birthdays and special occasions such as Mother’s Day or simply held an afternoon tea where families can spend quality time together. New systems have been put in place to increase supervision including a new appraisal system, staff training and internal promotions which have achieved amazing results for the service users who are cared for at Bowes Court.

“This hasn’t simply been a paper based exercise," said Ms Swainston."Everything we've done and implemented in the last 12 months has been done to improve the quality of care in Bowes Court.”

Bowes Court currently has 18 service users and a staff of about 40. It specialises in helping people with brain injuries, complex clinical issues and learning disabilities.