Lister House

What families say

People describe the staff as genuinely friendly and caring, creating an environment where new residents feel supported as they settle in. The home runs regular entertainment and wellbeing programmes that residents clearly value. Daily life is organised around what works for each person, rather than rigid routines.

Based on 10 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth55
• Compassion & dignity58
• Cleanliness60
• Activities & engagement52
• Food quality52
• Healthcare58
• Management & leadership42
• Resident happiness55

What inspectors found

Inspected 2018-11-27 · Report published 2018-11-27 · Inspected 1 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Good

  {"found":"Safety was rated Good at the September 2018 inspection. The home is registered for 76 beds and holds specialisms in dementia and nursing care. The published report does not include specific observations about medicines management, falls prevention, infection control, or night staffing ratios. A monitoring review in July 2023 found no new concerns requiring reassessment.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good safety rating is a baseline reassurance, but it does not tell you how many staff are on the dementia unit at 2am or how quickly someone responds when your dad falls. Good Practice research consistently identifies night staffing as the point where safety most often slips in care homes, and the published findings here give no figures for overnight cover in a 76-bed nursing home. Our family review data shows that attentiveness of staff accounts for 14% of what families praise most, and attentiveness at night is impossible to assess from a published summary alone. You will need to ask directly.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett rapid evidence review found that agency reliance and low night staffing ratios are among the strongest predictors of safety incidents in care homes. Neither is addressed in the published findings for this home.","watch_out":"Ask the manager: how many registered nurses and care staff are on duty overnight on the dementia unit, and what proportion of those shifts in the past month were covered by agency staff rather than permanent employees?"}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Good

  {"found":"Effectiveness was rated Good at the September 2018 inspection. This domain covers training, care planning, healthcare access, and food quality. No specific examples of dementia training content, GP access arrangements, medication reviews, or meal quality are included in the published summary. The Good rating suggests these areas broadly met the standard required at the time.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good effectiveness rating means inspectors were broadly satisfied with how the home plans and delivers care. For a home with a dementia specialism, the evidence base tells us that care plans need to work as living documents, updated regularly and shaped by the person's changing needs, not just filed at admission. Food quality is also a meaningful signal: 20.9% of the positive reviews in our dataset mention it directly, and how a home handles meals, including texture-modified diets for people with swallowing difficulties, tells you a great deal about how genuinely the team knows each resident. None of this detail is available from the published report, so you will need to gather it yourself.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that regular, meaningful dementia training (covering non-verbal communication, behaviour as communication, and person-centred approaches) is strongly associated with better care outcomes, and that its absence is a risk factor even in homes with Good ratings.","watch_out":"Ask the manager: how often are care plans formally reviewed, and can a family member attend that review? Then ask what dementia training all staff, including domestic and kitchen staff, have completed in the past 12 months."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Good

  {"found":"Caring was rated Good at the September 2018 inspection. This domain covers staff warmth, dignity, respect, and how much independence residents are supported to maintain. The published summary includes no inspector observations of interactions, no resident or relative quotes, and no specific examples of how staff treat people day to day. The rating indicates the standard was met, but the detail needed to judge quality of kindness is absent.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Staff warmth is the single most important theme in our family review data: 57.3% of positive reviews mention it by name, and compassion and dignity together account for a further 55.2%. These are not abstract values but observable things: whether a carer knocks before entering a room, uses your mum's preferred name, or sits at her level when speaking to her. The inspection rating here says the standard was met, but without specific observations or quotes it is impossible to tell whether the care is genuinely warm or merely compliant. The Good Practice evidence base is clear that non-verbal communication matters as much as spoken interaction for people with dementia, and this can only be assessed by watching it yourself.","evidence_base":"The Leeds Beckett evidence review found that person-led care depends on staff knowing individual histories, preferences, and communication styles, and that this knowledge is built through consistent staffing rather than through systems alone.","watch_out":"Arrive for your visit without announcing it as a formal tour. Walk through a communal area at a quiet time and watch how staff pass residents in corridors: do they stop, make eye contact, and use the person's name, or do they walk past?"}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Good

  {"found":"Responsiveness was rated Good at the September 2018 inspection. This domain covers activities, individual engagement, and how well the home meets each person's specific needs, including at the end of life. The home lists dementia as a specialism and cares for both older and younger adults. The published summary does not describe the activity programme, how one-to-one engagement is provided, or how individual preferences shape daily routines.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Resident happiness accounts for 27.1% of what families highlight in positive reviews, and activities account for a further 21.4%. For someone living with dementia, what matters is not just that activities exist but that they are tailored: a group singalong is of limited value to your dad if he cannot follow group instructions, but folding laundry or tending plants might connect him to a lifetime of habit. The Good Practice evidence review found that Montessori-based and everyday-task approaches produce measurable improvements in wellbeing for people with advanced dementia, yet these approaches require specific staff training and deliberate programme design. The published findings here do not confirm whether this kind of individual engagement is in place.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research rapid evidence review found that one-to-one, tailored activities, particularly those drawing on a person's occupational history, are significantly more effective at reducing distress in people with dementia than group-only programmes.","watch_out":"Ask to see the activity records from the past two weeks, not the planned schedule but the actual record of what happened. Then ask specifically: what does the team do to engage a resident who can no longer join group activities?"}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Requires improvement

  {"found":"Well-led was rated Requires Improvement at the September 2018 inspection. This is the only domain below Good. The published summary names the registered manager as Mr Steven Kenneth Kay and the nominated individual as Miss Kirstan Sparshott, but gives no explanation of what the Requires Improvement finding covered. A July 2023 monitoring review found no evidence requiring a formal reassessment, but this is a data review rather than a physical inspection. No new inspection has taken place since 2018.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Management and leadership account for 23.4% of what families highlight in our review data, and communication with families accounts for a further 11.5%. A Requires Improvement rating in Well-led is the finding that should concern you most here, not because it means the home is unsafe, but because leadership quality predicts the trajectory of everything else. The Good Practice evidence base is clear that stable, visible leadership is the strongest single predictor of sustained care quality. The fact that no full inspection has taken place since 2018, now more than six years ago, means you cannot know from public records alone whether the leadership concern was resolved or whether it persists. You will need to ask the manager directly what the finding covered and what changed as a result.","evidence_base":"The Leeds Beckett evidence review found that leadership stability is the strongest predictor of quality trajectory in care homes, and that homes where staff feel able to raise concerns openly are significantly less likely to have safeguarding incidents.","watch_out":"Ask the manager directly: what did the Requires Improvement finding in 2018 relate to, and what specific changes were made? Then ask how long the current manager has been in post, because a change of manager since 2018 means the person answering your questions was not there when the concern was identified."}

  Verified by inspector

Source: CQC inspection report →

What the evidence base says

Against the DCC Good Practice in Dementia Care standards, this home’s evidence aligns most strongly on The home provides specialist care for adults both under and over 65, with particular expertise in dementia support.. Gaps or open questions remain on For those living with dementia, the home's person-centred approach means care is tailored to individual needs. The structured activities and supportive staff team help create stability and engagement. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.