Broadoak Manor Care Home

What families say

During end-of-life care, staff have shown genuine emotional investment, spending personal time with residents and providing thoughtful support to grieving families. Families describe staff physically comforting residents with dementia through hand-holding and gentle de-escalation when distress arises.

Based on 26 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth72
• Compassion & dignity72
• Cleanliness70
• Activities & engagement60
• Food quality60
• Healthcare68
• Management & leadership75
• Resident happiness68

What inspectors found

Inspected 2021-08-17 · Report published 2021-08-17 · Inspected 4 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Good

  {"found":"Safe was rated Good at the February 2022 inspection, representing an improvement from the previous Requires Improvement rating. This domain covers staffing levels, medicines management, infection control, and how the home responds to safety incidents. The published summary does not include specific staffing ratios, details of any falls or incident reviews, or observations of medicines rounds. The improvement from the previous rating suggests that whatever specific safety concerns existed before were addressed to the inspector's satisfaction.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good rating in Safe is the baseline you need, but for a 120-bed nursing home caring for people with dementia, the detail behind that rating matters as much as the label. Good Practice research consistently identifies night staffing as the point where safety most often slips in larger homes: the ratio of carers to residents after midnight is rarely tested in the way daytime staffing is. The published inspection text does not record what the overnight staffing numbers are here, so this is a gap you need to fill yourself. Agency staff usage is another marker worth checking: homes that rely heavily on agency cover have staff who do not know your parent, cannot spot that something is different today, and are less likely to raise a concern with the manager.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review (IFF Research and Leeds Beckett University, 2026) found that agency staff reliance is one of the most consistent predictors of safety incidents in care homes, because continuity of staffing underpins the ability to notice and act on changes in a person's condition.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to show you the actual staffing rota for last week, not the template. Count how many shifts were covered by permanent staff versus agency workers, and ask specifically how many carers are on the dementia unit after 10pm."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Good

  {"found":"Effective was rated Good at the February 2022 inspection. This domain covers how well staff are trained, how care plans are written and kept up to date, how the home manages medicines, and how it supports people's health needs including GP and specialist access. The published summary does not specify the content or frequency of dementia training, does not describe how care plans are reviewed, and does not record any observations of healthcare interactions. The Good rating indicates inspectors were satisfied with the systems in place.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Dementia is listed as a specialism at Broadoak Manor, which means the home should have staff trained specifically in dementia care, including how to communicate with someone who has lost words, how to manage distress without medication, and how to read non-verbal signals. Good Practice research from 61 studies published in 2026 confirms that dementia-specific training makes a measurable difference to the quality of daily interactions, not just clinical outcomes. The published inspection text does not tell you what that training actually looks like here. Care plans being treated as living documents, updated when your parent's needs change and reviewed with your family, is one of the most reliable markers of genuinely person-centred care. Ask to see how this works in practice.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett University evidence review (2026) found that regular, structured dementia training, covering communication, behaviour understanding, and person-centred approaches, is one of the strongest predictors of dignity in care. Generic mandatory training alone is not sufficient.","watch_out":"Ask the manager what dementia-specific training staff on the nursing unit have completed in the last 12 months, and whether that training covers non-verbal communication. Then ask how recently your parent's care plan would be reviewed after a change in their condition, and whether families are invited to those reviews."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Good

  {"found":"Caring was rated Good at the February 2022 inspection. This domain covers staff warmth, dignity, respect, privacy, and whether people are supported to remain as independent as possible. The published summary does not include specific observations of staff interactions, does not record whether residents were addressed by preferred names, and does not include any quotes from residents or relatives about how they felt treated. The Good rating indicates the inspector was satisfied, but the supporting detail is not available in the published text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Staff warmth is the single most important factor in family satisfaction, cited in 57.3% of positive reviews across 3,602 families in the DCC review data. Compassion and dignity follow closely at 55.2%. These are not abstract qualities; they show up in specific observable moments: whether a carer knocks before entering your parent's room, whether they use the name your parent prefers rather than a shortened version they have never liked, whether they sit down rather than standing over someone during personal care. None of these details are recorded in the published inspection text for Broadoak Manor, which means your visit is the only way to assess them. The Good rating gives you a reasonable foundation, but the caring quality of a 120-bed home depends heavily on individual staff members and on the culture the manager sets.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review (2026) found that non-verbal communication, including pace, eye contact, and tone of voice, is as important as words for people living with dementia. Homes where staff are observed to slow down, make eye contact, and approach from the front consistently produce better wellbeing outcomes.","watch_out":"When you visit, pay attention to what happens in corridors and communal areas when a staff member passes your parent or another resident. Do they make eye contact, use a name, pause for a moment? Or do they walk past without acknowledgement? This is the single most reliable signal of daily caring culture."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Good

  {"found":"Responsive was rated Good at the February 2022 inspection. This domain covers whether the home tailors its care to individual needs, whether there is a meaningful activity programme, whether people can maintain their interests and independence, and whether end-of-life care is planned. The published summary does not describe the activity programme, does not record whether one-to-one engagement is available for people with advanced dementia, and does not reference end-of-life planning arrangements. The Good rating indicates inspectors were satisfied with the systems and approaches in place.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Resident happiness is the third-highest driver of family satisfaction in our review data, mentioned in 27.1% of positive reviews, and activities are cited in 21.4%. For people living with dementia, Good Practice research is clear that group activities alone are not enough: people with moderate to advanced dementia often cannot participate in communal sessions and need individual engagement, including familiar household tasks, music from their era, or simple sensory activities, to feel settled and purposeful. A 120-bed home has the capacity to employ dedicated activities staff, but whether that resource reaches the people who most need it, those who cannot come to the group, is something the published inspection text does not tell you. This is one of the most important gaps to investigate on your visit.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review (2026) found that Montessori-based and individualised activity approaches, particularly those that draw on a person's life history and everyday familiar tasks, produce significantly better wellbeing and reduced distress in people with moderate to advanced dementia compared with group-only programmes.","watch_out":"Ask the activities coordinator what would happen for your parent on a day when they could not or did not want to join a group session. Ask whether there is a member of staff whose specific role includes one-to-one time with people on the dementia unit, and ask to see the activities record for someone with a similar level of need to your parent."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Good

  {"found":"Well-led was rated Good at the February 2022 inspection, having previously been rated Requires Improvement. This domain covers the quality of management, the culture of the home, governance systems, and whether the home learns from complaints and incidents. The improvement in this domain is particularly significant because leadership quality is a strong predictor of whether all other aspects of care are sustained over time. The published summary names the Nominated Individual as Ms Anna Gretchen Selby. No specific detail is available on manager tenure, staff culture, or governance processes.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Management and leadership account for 23.4% of positive family reviews in the DCC data, and Good Practice research identifies leadership stability as one of the strongest predictors of sustained care quality. A home that has moved from Requires Improvement to Good across every domain has demonstrated that its leadership can identify problems and fix them, which is a positive signal. What families cannot yet tell from the published text is whether the manager who drove that improvement is still in post, how long they have been there, and whether the culture has been embedded deeply enough to survive a leadership change. Communication with families, cited in 11.5% of positive reviews, is another aspect of Well-led that is not described in the published summary.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett University evidence review (2026) found that manager tenure is one of the most reliable predictors of care quality trajectory. Homes where the registered manager has been in post for more than two years and is known by name to both residents and staff consistently outperform homes experiencing management turnover.","watch_out":"Ask how long the current registered manager has been in their role, and whether they are on site most days. Then ask how the home handled the last formal complaint it received: what happened, what changed as a result, and how the family involved was kept informed."}

  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 over and under 65, with specific experience supporting residents living with dementia.. Gaps or open questions remain on Staff demonstrate hands-on approaches to dementia care, including physical comfort techniques and de-escalation strategies for residents experiencing distress. The home maintains appropriate seating arrangements for residents with mobility limitations. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.