Nunthorpe Oaks Residential Care Home – Sanctuary Care

What families say

Families talk about the brightness and cleanliness that strikes you on arrival — a well-maintained space that feels genuinely welcoming. Staff create moments of real connection, from coordinating thoughtful birthday visits to ensuring Christmas celebrations include everyone. When residents return after hospital stays, the reception feels like coming back to people who've genuinely missed them.

Based on 24 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 2022-08-31 · Report published 2022-08-31 · Inspected 4 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Good

  {"found":"The Safe domain was rated Good at the August 2022 inspection. This rating requires inspectors to have been satisfied with staffing levels, medicines management, and safeguarding processes. The improvement from the previous Requires Improvement rating suggests that any safety concerns identified earlier had been addressed. No specific staffing numbers, medicines observations, or incident-logging details are reproduced in the published summary.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good Safe rating is a meaningful baseline, but it tells you a home meets the standard rather than how it feels day to day. Our review data shows that family satisfaction with safety is closely linked to staff attentiveness, which accounts for 14% of positive family reviews. The Good Practice evidence base flags that safety problems in care homes most often surface on night shifts, where staffing is thinnest. Because the published report gives no night staffing detail, this is a specific gap to fill before you decide. Ask for the overnight rota and count the permanent names.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice rapid evidence review (Leeds Beckett University, March 2026) identifies night staffing levels and agency staff reliance as the two most consistent predictors of safety lapses in residential dementia care. A home that improved from Requires Improvement needs to show that the improvements are embedded in rotas, not just policies.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to show you the actual staffing rota for a recent week, specifically the night shifts. Find out how many carers and seniors were on overnight for the dementia unit, and whether any of those shifts were covered by agency staff."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Good

  {"found":"The Effective domain was rated Good at the August 2022 inspection. This covers care planning, training, healthcare access, nutrition, and the involvement of external professionals. The home lists dementia as a specialism, which means inspectors would have looked at whether dementia-specific training and care approaches are in place. No specific detail about care plan quality, training records, GP access arrangements, or food and hydration practice is reproduced in the published text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Food quality appears in 20.9% of positive family reviews, making it one of the most mentioned aspects of care. Yet it is also one of the hardest to assess from a published rating alone. For a parent living with dementia, eating well often depends on staff knowing individual preferences, offering adapted textures, and sitting with someone long enough for them to finish a meal at their own pace. Healthcare access (20.2% of positive reviews) matters equally. Ask specifically how GP visits are arranged and how the home contacts you if your parent's health changes.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that care plans function best as living documents updated after every significant change in a person's condition, not as annual paperwork exercises. Homes where staff can describe a resident's personal history, food preferences, and daily routines from memory, rather than from a file, tend to deliver noticeably better outcomes for people living with dementia.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to walk you through what happens when a resident's needs change. Specifically, how quickly is the care plan updated, who is contacted in the family, and how is the change communicated to night staff who may not have been present?"}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Good

  {"found":"The Caring domain was rated Good at the August 2022 inspection. This domain is the most directly relevant to how staff treat your parent as an individual. A Good rating requires inspectors to have found evidence of dignity, respect, warmth, and support for independence. The published summary does not reproduce specific observations about how staff addressed residents, responded to distress, or supported people to make choices. The improvement from Requires Improvement suggests that any earlier concerns about care quality were resolved.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Staff warmth is the single biggest driver of family satisfaction in our review data, appearing in 57.3% of positive reviews. Compassion and dignity follow closely at 55.2%. These are not abstract qualities: they show up in whether a carer knocks before entering a room, uses the name your mum prefers rather than her formal name, and sits down to talk rather than completing a task and moving on. Because no specific observations are available in the published text, a visit is the only way to assess this for yourself. Arrive unannounced if you can, and spend time in a communal area watching ordinary interactions.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice review found that for people living with dementia, non-verbal communication, including tone of voice, eye contact, and physical proximity, matters as much as what is said. Staff who crouch to eye level, make unhurried physical contact, and use a calm tone consistently produce measurably lower levels of agitation in residents.","watch_out":"During a visit, watch what happens when a member of staff passes a resident in a corridor or communal area. Do they stop, make eye contact, and use the resident's preferred name, or do they walk past without acknowledging them? This small moment is one of the most reliable indicators of genuine warmth."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Good

  {"found":"The Responsive domain was rated Good at the August 2022 inspection. This covers activities, individual engagement, end-of-life planning, and how well the home adapts to each person's preferences and changing needs. The home cares for people with dementia, which makes individual responsiveness particularly important. No specific activities, engagement observations, or details about advance care planning are reproduced in the published text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Activities appear in 21.4% of positive family reviews, and resident happiness accounts for 27.1%. For a parent living with dementia, this is not about entertainment programmes. It is about whether someone is sitting alone in a chair for hours, or whether a member of staff sits with them, folds laundry together, looks at photographs, or tends a plant. Group activities only reach some people. The Good Practice evidence base is clear that one-to-one engagement, particularly for people at later stages of dementia, is what prevents withdrawal and distress. The published report does not confirm whether this home provides it systematically.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice review found that Montessori-based approaches and everyday household tasks (such as folding, sorting, and simple cooking) produce significantly higher engagement and wellbeing in people with moderate to advanced dementia than structured group activities alone. Homes that train staff in these approaches show measurable reductions in incidents of agitation.","watch_out":"Ask the activities coordinator (or the manager if there is no coordinator) to describe what happens for a resident who cannot join a group activity because of advanced dementia or anxiety. What does a typical Tuesday afternoon look like for that person specifically? Vague answers suggest one-to-one engagement is not systematically planned."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Good

  {"found":"The Well-led domain was rated Good at the August 2022 inspection. The home is run by Sanctuary Care Limited, with a named registered manager and a nominated individual in post. The improvement from a previous Requires Improvement rating across all five domains is a meaningful indicator of effective leadership, because it requires not only identifying problems but implementing and sustaining changes. No specific detail about management culture, staff feedback processes, or governance systems is reproduced in the published summary.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Management quality accounts for 23.4% of positive family reviews, and communication with families for 11.5%. The fact that this home improved from Requires Improvement to Good across every domain is genuinely encouraging. It suggests that the leadership team noticed what was wrong and fixed it. However, a July 2023 review confirmed no change in rating, which means the Good standard has been maintained for over a year. What matters now is whether that quality is embedded in the culture or dependent on individual people. Ask how long the current registered manager has been in post, and what would happen to continuity if they left.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice review found that leadership stability is the strongest single predictor of sustained quality in care homes. Homes where the registered manager has been in post for more than two years consistently outperform those with recent manager turnover, even where staffing and resourcing are comparable.","watch_out":"Ask the manager directly: how long have you been in this role, and how long has the current staff team been together? High turnover in the management team or among senior carers in the 12 months after an improvement judgement can indicate that the quality gains are fragile rather than embedded."}

  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 welcomes younger adults under 65 alongside older residents, creating a mixed community. They provide specialist dementia care as part of their residential services.. Gaps or open questions remain on For those living with dementia, the home's warmth during difficult moments — like medical emergencies or transitions back from hospital — offers particular reassurance. The structured social calendar helps maintain connection and routine. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.