Highlands Borders Care Home

What families say

Relatives talk about seeing real improvements in their loved ones' mood and participation in daily life. There's a sense that staff really understand what families go through during care transitions, offering emotional support alongside practical care.

Based on 14 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth72
• Compassion & dignity72
• Cleanliness68
• Activities & engagement62
• Food quality60
• Healthcare65
• Management & leadership70
• Resident happiness68

What inspectors found

Inspected 2020-05-06 · Report published 2020-05-06 · Inspected 3 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for safety at the November 2020 inspection. Beyond the rating itself, the published report does not include specific detail about staffing ratios, medicines management, falls records, or infection control practice. The inspection took place during the Covid-19 pandemic period, so infection control would have been scrutinised, but no findings are recorded in the available text. A registered manager was confirmed in post at the time of inspection.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good safety rating is reassuring, but it was awarded in 2020 and the published findings give you very little to examine in detail. Good Practice research consistently identifies night staffing as the area where safety is most likely to slip in small residential homes: a 28-bed home with mixed needs (dementia, learning disabilities, physical disabilities) needs enough staff overnight to respond quickly if more than one person needs help at the same time. Agency staff usage is also worth probing, because frequent agency use means unfamiliar faces for your parent, and people with dementia often find that distressing. Cleanliness accounts for 24.3% of positive family reviews in our data, so ask to walk the whole building, including bathrooms and sluice areas, not just the front lounge.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence base (IFF Research and Leeds Beckett, 2026) finds that learning from incidents is one of the strongest markers of a safety-conscious culture. A home that can show you what changed after a fall or a medication error is demonstrably safer than one that simply says incidents are rare.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to show you the actual staffing rota for the past seven days. Count how many shifts were covered by permanent staff and how many by agency workers, and ask specifically how many staff are on duty overnight for the full 28 residents."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for effectiveness at the November 2020 inspection. The published text does not include detail about care plan quality, GP access frequency, dementia training content, or food provision. Dementia is listed as a specialism, which implies some level of relevant training, but the inspection does not describe what that training consists of or how recently it was completed.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Effectiveness in a dementia care context means that staff know your parent as an individual, not just as a diagnosis, and that care plans are genuinely used rather than filed away. The Good Practice evidence base identifies care plans as living documents that should be reviewed regularly with family input: if a care plan was written on admission and has not been revisited since, it is almost certainly out of date. Food quality appears in 20.9% of positive family reviews, often as a proxy for how much the home actually knows and cares about each person. Ask what happens if your parent refuses a meal or has a particularly difficult day with eating, because the answer will tell you a great deal about how individualised the care really is.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett rapid evidence review (2026) found that dementia-specific training, particularly training that addresses non-verbal communication and behavioural expression of unmet need, is one of the most consistent predictors of positive outcomes for people living with dementia in residential care.","watch_out":"Ask the manager what dementia training all care staff are required to complete, when the most recent cohort finished that training, and whether any staff hold a formal qualification such as a dementia care certificate or equivalent."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for caring at the November 2020 inspection. No specific observations of staff interactions, preferred name use, or responses to distress are recorded in the available text. No resident or family quotes are available from the inspection report. The Good rating indicates that inspectors were satisfied with the standard of care observed, but without published detail it is not possible to describe what that looked like in practice.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Staff warmth is the single biggest driver of family satisfaction in our review data, mentioned in 57.3% of positive reviews, and compassion and dignity follow closely at 55.2%. These are not abstract qualities: they show up in small, observable moments. Does a staff member knock before entering a room? Do they use your parent's preferred name rather than a generic term of address? Do they sit down to speak to someone at eye level rather than standing over them? The inspection gives a Good rating but no specifics, so you need to observe these things yourself on a visit. Go at a time when personal care or a mealtime is happening, not just during a quiet afternoon period.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence base (IFF Research and Leeds Beckett, 2026) highlights that non-verbal communication matters as much as verbal communication for people with advanced dementia. Staff who move calmly, make eye contact, and give unhurried physical assistance produce measurably lower levels of distress in residents, even when verbal communication is no longer possible.","watch_out":"During your visit, watch how staff respond when a resident calls out or appears unsettled. Note whether staff stop what they are doing to respond, whether they make eye contact and use the person's name, and whether the interaction feels unhurried."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for responsiveness at the November 2020 inspection. Activities provision, individual care planning, and end-of-life arrangements are all listed as areas inspectors would typically consider under this domain, but none are described in the available text. The home's specialism list suggests it aims to meet a wide range of individual needs, including dementia, learning disabilities, and physical disabilities within a single 28-bed setting.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A home that genuinely responds to individuals does more than run a group activity in the lounge on Tuesday afternoons. For someone with dementia, activities need to be meaningful and connected to what the person valued before their diagnosis, whether that is gardening, listening to music from a particular era, or folding laundry. The Good Practice evidence base identifies tailored one-to-one activities as particularly important for people who can no longer participate in group settings. Activities engagement appears in 21.4% of positive family reviews and resident happiness in 27.1%, and they are closely linked. Because the inspection gives no detail here, visit on a weekday morning and observe what is actually happening in the communal areas, not what the activities timetable says should be happening.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett evidence review (2026) found that Montessori-based approaches, which draw on familiar everyday tasks and adapt them to current ability, produce significantly better engagement and mood outcomes for people with dementia compared to passive or entertainment-only activity programmes.","watch_out":"Ask to see the activities timetable for the past two weeks, not a printed template. Then ask what happens for someone with advanced dementia who cannot join group activities: how often do they receive one-to-one time, and who provides it?"}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for leadership at the November 2020 inspection. Miss Kelly Stalker is confirmed as registered manager and Mrs Danqi Zhang as nominated individual. No detail is available about management visibility, staff culture, governance systems, or how the home responds to complaints and incidents. The rating indicates inspectors were satisfied with the leadership structure at that point.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Leadership stability is one of the strongest predictors of care quality over time, according to the Good Practice evidence base. A manager who has been in post for several years, knows the staff well, and is physically present in the building most days creates a very different environment from one where the manager role turns over frequently. The inspection was carried out in 2020, which is nearly five years ago: it is entirely possible the registered manager has changed since then. Communication with families accounts for 11.5% of positive family reviews, and a well-led home will have clear, proactive systems for keeping you informed rather than waiting for you to chase. Management and leadership accounts for 23.4% of what families value most.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett rapid evidence review (2026) identifies leadership stability as a consistent predictor of quality trajectory: homes where the same manager has been in post for more than two years tend to show more stable and improving care standards than those with high management turnover.","watch_out":"Ask the current registered manager how long they have been in post and how long most of the senior care staff have worked at the home. High turnover at management or senior level, even if the rating is currently Good, is a risk factor worth understanding before you commit."}

  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 support for adults of all ages with dementia, learning disabilities and physical disabilities.. Gaps or open questions remain on With dementia care as a core specialism, the team understands how to support residents at different stages of their journey. The structured activity programme helps maintain engagement and connection. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.