The Devonshire Care Home

What families say

Families talk about staff being consistently friendly and approachable, taking time to chat and update them about their loved one's day. Visitors feel welcomed to join residents for meals and activities, making visits feel more natural and relaxed.

Based on 24 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth70
• Compassion & dignity70
• Cleanliness70
• Activities & engagement65
• Food quality65
• Healthcare70
• Management & leadership72
• Resident happiness68

What inspectors found

Inspected 2020-11-11 · Report published 2020-11-11 · Inspected 4 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for Safety at the August 2024 inspection. This represents a recovery from a previous Inadequate rating, which would have triggered formal regulatory action and monitoring. The published report does not include specific observations about medicines management, falls prevention, safeguarding processes, or night staffing arrangements. The home remains registered and operational with no dormancy recorded.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good rating for safety means inspectors were satisfied that the fundamental safeguards were in place. However, our Good Practice evidence base highlights that safety in large nursing homes most often slips at night, when staffing is thinnest and oversight is lowest. With 137 beds across what is likely multiple floors or units, you should ask specifically about overnight nurse cover and how quickly staff can respond to a fall or a person with dementia becoming distressed after dark. The previous Inadequate rating means the home had serious concerns at some point: it is entirely reasonable to ask the manager directly what changed and what evidence they have that those changes are embedded.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett University rapid evidence review found that agency staff reliance is one of the most consistent predictors of safety incidents in care homes, because unfamiliar staff do not know individual residents' baseline behaviours and are less likely to notice early signs of deterioration.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to show you the actual staffing rota for the past two weeks, not the planned template. Count how many different agency names appear on night shifts, and ask what the minimum nurse-to-resident ratio is overnight across all 137 beds."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for Effectiveness at the August 2024 inspection. This domain covers whether staff have the right training and skills, whether care plans are detailed and regularly reviewed, and whether residents have good access to healthcare professionals including GPs and specialist dementia support. No specific detail about training content, care plan quality, or healthcare access is available in the published report text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Effectiveness in a dementia care setting means your parent's care plan should be a living document that reflects who they are now, not who they were when they moved in. Our Good Practice evidence base is clear that care plans updated only at annual review are not adequate for people whose dementia is progressing. Ask when your parent's plan would first be written, who contributes to it, and how often it is updated when something changes. Food quality is also part of this domain and matters practically: people with dementia often lose weight because mealtimes are not managed well, not because appetite has gone.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that regular, structured GP involvement and proactive health monitoring (rather than reactive crisis response) significantly reduces avoidable hospital admissions for people living with dementia in care homes.","watch_out":"Ask how often a GP visits the home in person, not just responds to urgent calls, and ask to see an example of how a care plan was updated after a recent change in a resident's health or behaviour."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for Caring at the August 2024 inspection. This domain covers whether staff treat people with kindness, dignity, and respect, and whether residents are supported to maintain independence. No inspector observations, resident quotes, or relative testimony are available in the published report text to illustrate what caring interactions look like day to day at The Devonshire.","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 compassionate treatment appears in 55.2%. A Good rating for caring is encouraging, but it is the one domain where you absolutely need to observe for yourself. On your visit, watch what happens when a staff member passes a resident in a corridor: do they stop, make eye contact, use the person's name? Watch whether mealtimes feel unhurried. Our Good Practice evidence shows that non-verbal communication matters as much as words for people living with dementia, so a staff team that is warm in their body language and pace is more important than one that simply follows process.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that person-centred caring requires staff to know each individual's life history, preferences, and communication style. Homes where staff can describe a resident's background, favourite topics, and preferred name are significantly more likely to prevent distress and support wellbeing.","watch_out":"When you visit, ask a member of staff (not the manager) what your parent's preferred name would be called and one thing they enjoy. A staff team that genuinely knows residents can answer this without hesitation; a staff team going through the motions cannot."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for Responsiveness at the August 2024 inspection. This domain covers whether the home provides activities that are meaningful to individuals, whether it responds to complaints effectively, and whether end-of-life care is planned and person-centred. No specific detail about the activity programme, individual engagement, or complaints handling is available in the published report text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Activities engagement is valued by 21.4% of positive family reviews in our dataset, and resident happiness appears in 27.1%. For a person living with dementia, the question is not whether the home has a group activity programme (most do) but whether your parent will have something meaningful to do on an ordinary Tuesday afternoon if they cannot or will not join a group. Our Good Practice evidence base consistently finds that one-to-one engagement, including simple tasks like folding, gardening, or looking through photographs, has a measurable positive effect on mood and reduces distress. Ask specifically about this, not just the weekly timetable.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review identified Montessori-based and everyday-task approaches as among the most effective for people with moderate to advanced dementia, precisely because they do not require group participation and draw on long-term procedural memory that dementia often preserves.","watch_out":"Ask the activities coordinator (ideally, speak to them directly rather than through the manager) how many hours of one-to-one activity each resident on the dementia unit receives in an average week, and ask for a specific example of what that looked like for a resident last week."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Not yet rated

  {"found":"The home was rated Good for Well-led at the August 2024 inspection. A named registered manager and a nominated individual are recorded as responsible for the service. The home is run by MMCG (2) Limited. No specific detail about management visibility, staff culture, governance processes, or how the home responded to its previous Inadequate rating is available in the published report text.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Management quality is mentioned in 23.4% of positive family reviews, and it is the domain that most predicts whether a Good rating will hold. Our Good Practice evidence base is clear that leadership stability, meaning a manager who has been in post long enough to build a consistent staff culture, is one of the strongest predictors of sustained quality. The home's journey from Inadequate to Good is a genuine achievement, but it raises a specific question: how long has the current registered manager been in post, and was that person part of the recovery or appointed after it? Communication with families, flagged in 11.5% of positive reviews, is also worth probing directly.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that care homes with stable, visible leadership and a culture where staff feel able to raise concerns without fear perform significantly better on both safety and quality measures over time, and are less likely to deteriorate between inspections.","watch_out":"Ask the registered manager how long they have been in post at The Devonshire, what the biggest change they made after the previous Inadequate rating was, and how families are notified when there is a concern about their parent's health or wellbeing. The specificity and confidence of those answers will tell you a great deal."}

  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 Devonshire cares for people over 65 and has experience supporting those with dementia. They work with both self-funding and local authority funded residents.. Gaps or open questions remain on Staff here understand the importance of keeping people with dementia engaged and connected to their families. The activity programme includes residents living with dementia. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.