We spoke with six people who used the service and three relatives of people who used the service. People told us that they were happy with the care that they received. One person told us, “I like it here, it’s peaceful and I get to rest.” A relative told us, “I am really impressed with this hospital, the staff are wonderful and it has a calm feel about it.”

People told us that they received the care and support they needed. One person told us that staff were, “Lovely, very helpful and very hard-working.” We looked at the care records for six people who were using the service. We saw that people were provided with care and treatment that met their individual needs. We identified that food and fluid charts were not completed with detailed information required. For example one entry was listed as, ‘Soup.’ We saw few fluid entries for people identified as high risk of dehydration. Therefore this did not provide enough information to support nutritional needs of people.

We viewed the staff rota and observed staffing. There were enough skilled and qualified staff to meet the needs of people who used the service.

Staff respected people’s choices and preferences. All people we spoke with who used the service told us that the staff treated them with dignity and respect. Care was provided in a manner which supported that people were treated with dignity and respect.

Halstead community hospital ward is a purpose built 20-bed ward located within Halstead Hospital. People cared for require rehabilitation, for example following a fall or surgery, and all are over the age of 18.  Halstead Community Hospital ward is managed by Central Essex Community Services C.I.C (Community Interest Company).

We chose to inspect Halstead Community Hospital Ward as part of the first pilot phase of the new inspection process we are introducing for community health services. Halstead Community Hospital Ward was last inspected in 2013; at that point it was not meeting national standards in respect of assessing and monitoring the quality of service provision.

In general, we found that Halstead Community Hospital ward provided safe care. People were protected from abuse and avoidable harm and mechanisms were in place to monitor, report and learn from safety incidents such as falls and pressure ulcers.

We found examples of good leadership, and most staff felt very well supported by their managers. Staff said that they had good training and development opportunities; although clinical supervision arrangements were not as robust.  Staff spoke with passion about their work and demonstrated commitment to provide the best care they could.

Patients and their families were appropriately involved in and central to making decisions about their care and the support needed. The majority of patients and their relatives were positive about the care and treatment they had received.

Results of internal customer surveys conducted in 2012/13 of all services provided by Central Essex Community Services were generally favourable although it is not possible to benchmark the results against other similar organisations. The vast majority of people spoke positively about their care, and we saw some good examples of staff delivering compassionate care to patients and their families.