Ventress Hall Care Home – Care UK

What families say

Visitors describe feeling genuinely welcomed, with staff taking time to answer questions and offer reassurance. The atmosphere feels relaxed rather than institutional, and families appreciate how patient the team is when they're worried or need extra support.

Based on 17 Google reviews · 0 reviews on carehome.co.uk · most recent 2026-04-10

The eight family priority themes

• Staff warmth72
• Compassion & dignity72
• Cleanliness72
• Activities & engagement65
• Food quality65
• Healthcare70
• Management & leadership75
• Resident happiness70

What inspectors found

Inspected 2023-02-04 · Report published 2023-02-04 · Inspected 5 times in the last three years

• Is this home safe?

  Good

  {"found":"The Safe domain was rated Good at the October 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 accidents and incidents. The published report does not include specific observations on staffing ratios, night cover, or agency staff usage. The improvement from the previous rating suggests the home addressed whatever safety concerns were identified earlier. No specific concerns were flagged in the published summary.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"A Good Safe rating after a previous Requires Improvement is reassuring, but the published text does not tell you the specifics that matter most to families. Our review data shows that staff attentiveness is mentioned in 14% of positive family reviews, often in connection with how quickly staff respond at night or in moments of distress. Good Practice research consistently identifies night staffing as the point where safety most often slips in care homes. The absence of detail in this report means you need to ask those questions directly. Do not assume a Good rating means night cover is generous; it means it met the minimum required standard at the time of inspection.","evidence_base":"The IFF Research and Leeds Beckett University rapid evidence review found that agency staff reliance is one of the strongest predictors of inconsistent safety outcomes in care homes, particularly for residents living with dementia who depend on familiar faces and established routines.","watch_out":"Ask the manager to show you the actual staffing rota for the past two weeks, not a template or a planned rota. Count how many of the night shift names are permanent staff versus agency, and ask whether the same agency workers return regularly."}

  Verified by inspectorMentioned, not assessed

• Is the care effective?

  Good

  {"found":"The Effective domain was rated Good at the October 2022 inspection. This domain covers training, care planning, healthcare access, nutrition, and how well the home meets the specific needs of the people who live there. The home lists dementia, learning disabilities, mental health conditions, and physical disabilities as specialisms, which means staff should be trained across a wide range of needs. The published report does not include detail on the content of dementia training, how often care plans are reviewed, or how the home monitors healthcare outcomes. The Good rating indicates inspectors were satisfied with the evidence presented.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Food quality and dementia-specific training are the two Effective-domain factors that appear most often in positive family reviews, with food mentioned in 20.9% of reviews and dementia-specific care in 12.7%. The inspection does not give us detail on either. What the Good Practice evidence tells us is that care plans should be treated as living documents, updated after any significant change in your parent's condition and reviewed with the family at least every three months. Ask specifically whether you would be invited to care plan reviews, and how the home would let you know if your parent's needs changed between formal reviews.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that regular, structured GP access combined with proactive health monitoring, rather than reactive crisis calls, is one of the clearest markers of an effective care home for people with complex needs including dementia.","watch_out":"Ask the manager how often your parent's care plan would be formally reviewed, who attends those reviews, and how you would be contacted if a GP visit or hospital referral was made. Ask to see an example of how the home records a change in a resident's health between scheduled reviews."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is this home caring?

  Good

  {"found":"The Caring domain was rated Good at the October 2022 inspection. This domain covers the warmth and respect shown by staff in day-to-day interactions, how well staff protect residents' dignity and independence, and whether residents feel genuinely listened to. The published report does not include direct quotes from residents or relatives, nor specific observations of staff behaviour such as knocking before entering rooms, using preferred names, or responding calmly to distress. The Good rating indicates inspectors found sufficient evidence of caring practice, but the detail behind that judgement is not available in the published summary.","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 together account for 55.2%. These are not abstract qualities: they show up in whether a member of staff stops what they are doing to speak to your parent rather than talking over them, whether they use your parent's preferred name without being prompted, and whether they move at your parent's pace rather than their own. The absence of specific evidence in this report does not mean these things are not happening; it means you need to observe them yourself on a visit.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that non-verbal communication, including tone, pace, and physical proximity, is as important as spoken language for people living with dementia, and that staff who understand this tend to produce measurably lower rates of distress behaviour in residents.","watch_out":"During your visit, watch what happens when a member of staff passes your parent or another resident in a corridor. Do they make eye contact, use a name, pause even briefly? Or do they walk past without acknowledgement? That small moment tells you more about the culture of care than any conversation with the manager."}

  Verified by inspectorResident testimony recorded

• Is the home responsive?

  Good

  {"found":"The Responsive domain was rated Good at the October 2022 inspection. This domain covers whether the home provides activities and engagement tailored to individuals, how it responds to complaints, and how it supports residents at the end of life. The home serves a wide range of needs including dementia, learning disabilities, and mental health conditions, which means responsiveness to individual need is particularly important. The published report does not include detail on the activities programme, whether one-to-one engagement is offered, or how end-of-life care is planned. The Good rating indicates the home met the required standard in the inspector's assessment.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Resident happiness is cited in 27.1% of positive family reviews, and activities and engagement appear in 21.4%. For residents living with dementia, the Good Practice evidence is clear that group activities alone are not sufficient: people who cannot reliably join group sessions need individual, meaningful engagement built into their daily routine. That might be folding laundry, looking through a photograph album, or tending to plants, but it needs to be planned and staffed. Ask specifically what happens for your parent on a day when they cannot or will not join a group session.","evidence_base":"The Good Practice evidence review found that Montessori-based and everyday-task approaches to activity, where residents engage in familiar, purposeful actions rather than passive entertainment, produce significantly better outcomes for wellbeing and reduced anxiety in people with moderate to advanced dementia.","watch_out":"Ask to see the activities planner for last week, not a future planned schedule. Check whether individual one-to-one sessions are listed alongside group activities, and ask who is responsible for delivering them and whether that person is a dedicated activities coordinator or a care staff member fitting it around other duties."}

  Verified by inspector

• Is the home well-led?

  Good

  {"found":"The Well-led domain was rated Good at the October 2022 inspection, and the home has an identified registered manager, Ms Diane Encinias, and a nominated individual, Ms Rachel Louise Harvey. The home improved from Requires Improvement to Good overall, which requires a sustained period of effective leadership to achieve. The published report does not include detail on how long the current manager has been in post, whether staff feel supported to raise concerns, or how the home uses feedback from residents and families to improve. The Good rating indicates inspectors found a governance framework that was functioning adequately.","quotes":[],"family_meaning":"Management quality accounts for 23.4% of positive family reviews, and communication with families appears in 11.5%. The improvement from Requires Improvement to Good is the strongest positive signal in this report: it means the leadership team recognised problems and fixed them, which is a better predictor of future quality than a home that has always been Good without being tested. Good Practice research consistently finds that leadership stability, specifically how long the registered manager has been in post, is one of the best predictors of care quality over time. A manager who has been in place through the improvement period is a particularly positive sign.","evidence_base":"The Leeds Beckett University evidence review found that homes where staff feel psychologically safe to raise concerns without fear of blame have measurably better resident outcomes, and that this culture is almost always set by the registered manager rather than emerging organically from the team.","watch_out":"Ask the registered manager directly how long they have been in post, what the main concern was that led to the previous Requires Improvement rating, and what specifically changed. A manager who can answer that question clearly and without defensiveness is demonstrating exactly the kind of accountable leadership the Good Practice evidence identifies as protective."}

  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 Ventress Hall supports adults of all ages with physical disabilities, mental health conditions, and learning disabilities. They also provide dementia care, though experiences in the specialist unit have been mixed.. Gaps or open questions remain on The home has a dedicated dementia unit, though one family did report concerns about the level of attention their relative received there. It's worth discussing specific dementia care approaches with the team before making any decisions. — areas worth probing directly during a visit.