Westholme

What families say

Families describe a respectful atmosphere where their loved ones with Alzheimer's receive support to maintain their dignity. The environment feels calm, with residents engaged in activities suited to their abilities.

Based on 5 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth55
• Compassion & dignity55
• Cleanliness55
• Activities & engagement50
• Food quality50
• Healthcare55
• Management & leadership60
• Resident happiness55

What inspectors found

Inspected 2019-03-19 · Report published 2019-03-19 · Inspected 3 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for safety at its November 2020 inspection. No specific detail about staffing ratios, falls management, medicines handling, or infection control practice was included in the published inspection text. A review in July 2023 found no evidence requiring a change to this rating. The home is registered to provide nursing care, which means qualified nurses should be on duty, but shift patterns and night staffing numbers are not recorded in the available findings.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Safety is the foundation of everything, and a Good rating here is reassuring after the previous Requires Improvement. However, the Good Practice evidence base (drawn from 61 studies) consistently identifies night staffing as the point where safety most often slips in nursing homes, particularly on dementia units. The inspection text does not tell us how many staff are present overnight for 74 residents. Agency staff reliance is another known risk factor: high agency use means your parent may be cared for by people who do not know their routines, their triggers, or their name. You cannot tell from the published findings whether either of these risks applies here, so you need to ask directly.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that incidents of harm in care homes are disproportionately likely to occur on night shifts and that homes with high agency staff use show weaker safety outcomes, because unfamiliar staff cannot apply the individual knowledge that prevents falls and distress.","watch_out":"Ask the manager: how many registered nurses and care staff are on duty overnight for the dementia unit specifically, and what percentage of shifts in the last month were covered by agency staff rather than permanent employees? Request to see an actual rota from last week, not a template."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for effectiveness at its November 2020 inspection. The home lists dementia as a specialism and is registered to provide nursing care and treatment of disease. No specific information about care plan quality, GP access arrangements, dementia training content, or food provision was included in the published inspection text. The July 2023 monitoring review did not identify concerns requiring reassessment.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Food quality may seem like a small detail, but our family review data shows it features in 20.9% of positive reviews by name, and the Good Practice research identifies it as a genuine marker of how well a home knows its residents as individuals. A home that can tell you not just that your dad gets a soft diet but that he prefers his tea without sugar and likes a biscuit at 10am is a home that has done the work of knowing him. Similarly, care plans should be living documents updated after every health change, not annual paperwork exercises. Neither of these areas is evidenced in the published findings for Westholme, so they require direct investigation.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that person-centred care plans updated regularly and co-produced with families are associated with better health outcomes and lower rates of avoidable hospital admission for people living with dementia.","watch_out":"Ask to see an example care plan (anonymised if necessary) and check whether it includes the person's life history, preferred routines, and communication needs. Then ask how often care plans are reviewed and whether families are invited to those reviews."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for caring at its November 2020 inspection. No direct inspector observations of staff interactions, no resident or relative quotes, and no specific examples of dignity or compassion in practice were included in the published inspection text. The Good rating in this domain after a previous Requires Improvement is a positive signal, but the evidence behind it is not detailed in the available public record.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Staff warmth is the single biggest driver of family satisfaction in our review data, cited in 57.3% of positive reviews, and compassion and dignity follow closely at 55.2%. These are not abstract qualities; they show up in very specific moments: whether a staff member knocks before entering a room, whether they use your mum's preferred name, whether they sit down to speak with her rather than talking from standing height. The inspection gives you a Good rating but no window into those moments. On a visit, watch what happens in unscripted interactions, in corridors, at the nurses station, during handovers. That is where the real culture of a home is visible.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review highlights that for people living with advanced dementia, non-verbal communication, including tone of voice, eye contact, and unhurried physical presence, is as important as verbal interaction, and that staff who are trained in this show measurably lower rates of resident agitation.","watch_out":"During your visit, find a moment to sit in a communal area without staff knowing you are observing. Notice whether staff greet residents by name, whether they crouch or sit to make eye contact, and whether they appear rushed during care tasks."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for responsiveness at its November 2020 inspection. No specific detail about the activity programme, individual engagement, end-of-life care planning, or how the home tailors care to individual preferences was included in the published inspection text. The home lists dementia as a specialism, which implies some structured approach to individual need, but this is not evidenced in the available findings.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Activities and engagement feature in 21.4% of positive family reviews, and resident happiness in 27.1%. But our Good Practice evidence base makes an important distinction: group activities, a sing-along, a quiz, an exercise class, are only part of the picture. For people living with more advanced dementia who cannot join a group, one-to-one engagement becomes essential. This might be a staff member spending ten minutes looking through a photograph album, or involving your parent in a familiar household task. There is no information in the published findings about whether Westholme provides this kind of individual engagement, so it is one of the most important things to ask about directly.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that Montessori-based approaches and familiar everyday tasks (such as folding, sorting, and simple cooking activities) used as one-to-one engagement produced significant reductions in agitation and withdrawal in people with moderate to advanced dementia.","watch_out":"Ask the activities coordinator: if my parent cannot participate in group activities, what would a typical day look like for them? Ask to see records of one-to-one engagement from the last two weeks for a resident with advanced dementia."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Good

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for well-led at its November 2020 inspection, up from a previous Requires Improvement rating. A named Registered Manager (Mrs Christine Jane Fermor) and a Nominated Individual (Mrs Jane Selvage) are recorded. The home is operated by Hampshire County Council. No specific detail about management visibility, staff culture, governance processes, or how the home responds to complaints was included in the published inspection text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Management quality predicts care quality over time, and the improvement from Requires Improvement to Good in this domain is the most meaningful single data point in the available record. Our Good Practice evidence base shows that leadership stability is one of the strongest predictors of sustained quality: homes with a consistent, visible manager who staff respect tend to improve and hold that improvement. Communication with families, cited in 11.5% of positive reviews, is a direct product of leadership culture. However, this inspection is now over four years old. Manager tenure can change, and the culture a manager builds can shift. The key question is whether the same manager is still in post.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that bottom-up leadership cultures, where care staff feel empowered to raise concerns and contribute to decisions, are associated with lower staff turnover and better resident outcomes, particularly in homes caring for people with dementia.","watch_out":"Ask directly: is Mrs Fermor still the Registered Manager, and how long has she been in post? Then ask how staff raise concerns if they are unhappy about care practice, and whether there have been any significant staffing changes in the last 12 months."}

  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 cares for adults both under and over 65, with particular experience in dementia support.. Gaps or open questions remain on Dementia care here centers on maintaining dignity and providing appropriate activities. The team works to create a calm, structured environment that helps residents feel secure. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.