Enter and View Report: Kavanagh Place

In June 2024 we visited Kavanagh Place, a specialist care home for adults living with complex needs. It supports adults living with complex mental health needs, physical disabilities and dementia, including people living with degenerative or life-limiting illnesses.e.g. Huntington’s and brain injuries. Some of the residents have a learning disability as a secondary diagnosis.

The home has 42 bed capacity and 40 people were in residence at the time of our visit. The home includes 4 units. Abbey Road is male only; Penny Lane is largely for female residents but 2 non-mobile males were also living there when we visited. Strawberry Fields is the dementia unit, and Mathew Street is tailored towards people with Huntington’s Disease although 2 non-Huntington’s residents were also living there.  

Kavanagh Place is run by Exemplar Health Care. 

Summary

Kavanagh Place appeared clean and well maintained with recent efforts clearly being made to make it feel more homely, personalised and cheerful. The outdoor areas and dining areas were reasonable but could perhaps have been more welcoming. The few residents we spoke to seemed happy with both the food and activities on offer, they appeared well cared for, clean and well-presented, and the new activities boards/weekly calendars of activities demonstrated the variety of activities and opportunities on offer to residents.

Overall, we observed that Kavanagh Place appears to be a warm, inviting, and well-run care home which is investing in its staff to encourage retention and commitment to the home and its residents, and which is involving residents and families in ongoing discussions about day-to-day matters and ongoing improvements. 

Recommendations 

We make the following recommendations in relation to Kavanagh Place:

• We are impressed by the amount of planning and work going into making then environment at Kavanagh Place more welcoming such as the new pictures art and furniture that is planned to be installed. We would like to be updated when this is in place so we can see the changes and credit the staff for the hard work.
• The Easy Read activities boards on the various units looked great and seemed like they will assist in residents being able to engage with the activities on offer. We understand that they are new features but as only one unit at the time of our visit had it updated fully, we would like to see this fantastic accessibility aide used to its full potential across the site. 

Positives and good practice

We found during our visit examples of positives and good practice which included but were not limited to:

• The service seemed to be functioning smoothly with an interim manager in place and there was evidence of multiple positive changes to the environment and new plans for activities and ways of working. This reflects well on the efforts made by staff and leadership at Kavanagh Place.
• The service was linked in well with groups in the community that support their residents from The Huntington’s Disease Association, The Brain Charity to local pubs where the residents can enjoy their independence. This commitment to collaboration with partnerships includes the cities universities and seems to be strengthening practice and helping facilitate new way of working.
• Staff at Kavanagh Place discussed how they work hard to get residents out and about in the community and we saw this during our visit. Residents and staff discussed their days trips to Crosby Harbour and their upcoming pub trips. Staff took residents on public transport to trips which is a great way of maintaining independence for residents who can take part in this. We also saw multiple residents in the local are being supported by staff outside of the care home.