Enter and View Report: Mersey Parks

In June 2024 we visited Mersey Parks, a care home providing residential dementia care, general residential care and general nursing care. It consists of 4 purpose-built single storey units with 30 beds each. There is a 5th unit on the same site, The Hamlets. This unit also has 30 beds, but is managed by a different provider, Age Concern Liverpool and Sefton. Mersey Parks provides food, laundry and emergency maintenance for The Hamlets but care arrangements and staffing are completely separate. We did not visit The Hamlets. The home can have 120 residents across the 4 units. At the time of our visit there were 117 people living at the home. The service is operated by HC-One and does not charge top up fees.

Summary

The small number of residents we spoke to gave positive comments about the staff, the care and the home. Despite being quite large the lounge areas managed to have a homely feel and looked well looked after. The home appeared clean, although there was a very slight smell of urine on entering one of the units. 

We were pleased to hear about the plans to improve some of the units’ environments to make them more appropriate for residents living with dementia. As the manager pointed out, there were not many options for those residents who might want to spend some time in a quieter area apart from going to their bedrooms.

The gardens we saw were large and pleasant, but we felt they could be improved on by adding more seating and by using the raised beds for gardening, especially if any of the residents would be interested in being involved. We also think levelling Sefton unit’s garden is a good idea.

Overall, we observed that Mersey Parks seems a well-run care home with staff who care about the residents. We would like to return later this year to see some of the planned changes, and to be able to speak to more residents and staff.

Recommendations 

We make the following recommendations for Mersey Parks care home:

• Improve seating arrangements in the gardens
• Use the raised beds in the garden areas
• Continue with plans for quieter dementia-friendly community areas