Farm Lane Care Home – Care UK

What families say

Families visiting Farm Lane often comment on the warm reception they receive from staff during their visits. The home maintains clean, pleasant surroundings that help create a more comfortable atmosphere for both residents and their loved ones.

Based on 15 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth75
• Compassion & dignity75
• Cleanliness72
• Activities & engagement68
• Food quality68
• Healthcare72
• Management & leadership74
• Resident happiness72

What inspectors found

Inspected 2023-05-06 · Report published 2023-05-06 · Inspected 7 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"Safe was rated Good at the January 2025 inspection. This domain covers staffing levels, medicines management, infection control, and the home's response to risk and incidents. The home provides nursing care across 66 beds, which means a registered nurse must be on duty at all times. No specific concerns about safety were recorded in the published summary, representing a significant improvement from the previous Requires Improvement period.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good safety rating is a baseline, not a ceiling. Our review data shows that families mention staff attentiveness in around 14% of positive reviews, and night-time safety is the area where the Good Practice evidence (IFF Research, Leeds Beckett, March 2026) most consistently identifies slippage. The fact that this home has recovered to Good from Requires Improvement is encouraging, but the published summary does not tell you the night staffing numbers, the rate of agency use, or how falls and incidents are logged and reviewed. For a parent with dementia, particularly one who may be mobile at night, those details matter more than the headline rating.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice rapid evidence review found that night staffing is the most common point at which safety deteriorates in care homes, and that high agency staff use is consistently associated with poorer safety outcomes because agency workers do not know individual residents well enough to notice early signs of deterioration.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to show you the actual staffing rota for the past two weeks, not a template. Count how many permanent staff versus agency staff covered night shifts, and ask what the minimum staffing number is for the dementia unit after 10pm."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"Effective was rated Good at the January 2025 inspection. This domain covers staff training, care planning, access to healthcare professionals including GPs and specialists, and nutritional care. The home lists dementia as a specialism, which means inspectors will have assessed whether staff have appropriate dementia-specific training. No specific concerns were identified in the published summary.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Our review data places food quality (20.9% weight) and healthcare access (20.2% weight) among the themes families value most, alongside dementia-specific care. A Good Effective rating suggests the home met inspection standards in all of these areas, but the published summary does not tell you how often care plans are reviewed, whether families are invited to reviews, or what specific dementia training staff have completed. The Good Practice evidence is clear that care plans function as living documents only when they are reviewed regularly and when families contribute to them. Ask directly how your parent's plan would be updated if their condition changed.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett rapid evidence review found that dementia training which includes communication techniques for non-verbal residents produces measurably better wellbeing outcomes than generic care training, and that care plans updated with family input are more likely to reflect genuine individual preferences.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to describe the last dementia training the staff team completed: what it covered, who delivered it, and how recently it was updated. Then ask to see a blank care plan template so you can judge whether there is space for personal history, preferences, and communication style, not just medical needs."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"Caring was rated Good at the January 2025 inspection. This domain covers how staff treat the people who live in the home, including dignity, respect, privacy, and whether staff know residents as individuals. Inspectors rated this positively, suggesting that observed interactions met the Good standard. The home cares for people with a range of conditions including dementia, where the quality of moment-to-moment staff interaction is particularly significant.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Staff warmth is the single biggest driver of positive family feedback in our review data, mentioned in 57.3% of positive reviews, with compassion and dignity close behind at 55.2%. A Good Caring rating is a positive signal, but the published summary does not quote specific inspector observations or family testimony, so it is not possible to say what warmth looked like in practice here. The Good Practice evidence is consistent that for people with dementia, non-verbal communication, tone of voice, unhurried pace, and use of a person's preferred name matters as much as spoken words. These are things you can observe for yourself during a visit.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that person-led care, where staff know and use an individual's life history, preferences, and communication style, produces significantly better wellbeing outcomes for people with dementia than compliance-based care that meets standards without knowing the person.","watch_out":"During your visit, watch what happens when a staff member passes your parent's room or crosses paths with a resident in a corridor. Do they make eye contact, use the person's name, and pause without hurry? Ask staff what your parent's preferred name is and how they would know that on their first shift."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"Responsive was rated Good at the January 2025 inspection. This domain covers whether the home tailors care to individual needs, whether there is a meaningful activities programme, how complaints are handled, and whether end-of-life care is planned in advance. For a 66-bed nursing home with dementia and mental health specialisms, responsiveness includes ensuring that people who cannot join group activities still receive meaningful engagement.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Our review data places resident happiness (27.1% weight) and activities (21.4% weight) among the themes families prioritise. A Good Responsive rating suggests the inspection found these areas satisfactory, but the published summary gives no detail on what activities are on offer, how they are adapted for people with advanced dementia, or whether one-to-one engagement is available for residents who cannot participate in groups. The Good Practice evidence is clear that Montessori-based approaches and everyday household tasks, such as folding, gardening, and preparing food, produce better engagement outcomes for people with dementia than scheduled group entertainment alone.","evidence_base":"The rapid evidence review found that individual, tailored activities, particularly those rooted in a person's occupational history and daily routines, produce significantly better engagement and mood outcomes for people with dementia than group-only activity programmes.","watch_out":"Ask to see the activities schedule for the past two weeks, not a printed template. Then ask specifically: if your parent could not or would not join a group session on a given day, what would happen instead? Who would sit with them and for how long?"}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"Well-led was rated Good at the January 2025 inspection. The home has a named registered manager, Mrs Diana Gooranah, and a nominated individual, Ms Rachel Louise Harvey, both recorded at the time of inspection. The home is operated by Care UK Community Partnerships Ltd. A Good Well-led rating indicates that inspectors found governance, quality monitoring, and leadership culture to be satisfactory at the point of assessment.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Our review data places management and leadership at 23.4% weight in the family scoring model, with communication with families at 11.5%. The previous Requires Improvement rating makes the recovery to Good across all domains genuinely significant, but the history also means it is worth asking how stable the leadership team has been across that period. The Good Practice evidence is consistent that leadership stability is one of the strongest predictors of sustained quality: homes with high management turnover tend to decline faster when pressures increase. Knowing whether Mrs Gooranah has been in post throughout the improvement period, or is newly appointed, would tell you something meaningful about how durable this recovery is likely to be.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett review found that homes where the registered manager had been in post for more than two years, and where staff felt able to raise concerns without fear, showed consistently better quality trajectories than homes with recent leadership changes, even when current ratings were similar.","watch_out":"Ask the manager directly how long she has been in post, and whether the leadership team that oversaw the improvement from Requires Improvement to Good is still in place. Also ask how families are notified if something goes wrong with their parent's care, and what the process is for raising a concern informally before it becomes a formal complaint."}

  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 residents with dementia, learning disabilities, and mental health conditions. They also support adults over 65 and those living with physical disabilities.. Gaps or open questions remain on For those living with dementia, Farm Lane offers specialist support as part of their range of services. The team has experience caring for residents with varying stages of dementia alongside other complex needs. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.