STAFF at a Kingsdown care home are celebrating after receiving the highest grade following an inspection.

Fitzwarren House has been deemed outstanding overall by the Care Quality Commission inspectors who were impressed when they visited the care home earlier this month and spoke to some of its 64 residents.

They said in their report: “Staff were highly skilled and had a natural aptitude to give reassurance and comfort to people living in the home.

“They treated people with the utmost dignity and respect when helping them with daily living tasks. There was an excellent understanding of seeing each person as an individual with their own specific needs.”

The care home’s manager Sue Smith was singled out by the CQC team for being “extremely passionate about delivering very high standards of care” and establishing “excellent links within the local community for the benefit of people living at Fitzwarren House."

Sue said: “We are thrilled and delighted to be classed as being an outstanding nursing and dementia care home. The report really demonstrates what we see on a daily basis at Fitzwarren House of our staff and volunteers caring for our residents and making sure they can live life to the full with our support.”

The care home is part of the MHA chain of homes.

MHA’s director of care homes, Linda Zaidi, said: “All the staff at Fitzwarren House should be proud of this report. At MHA we pride ourselves on providing high quality, personalised care for all our residents and the inspectors certainly saw this in abundance at the home.

“It is becoming increasingly harder for homes to be awarded an outstanding inspection report, especially for nursing homes, so this report is testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone at Fitzwarren House.”

The home was rated outstanding for being caring and responsive, and good for being safe, effective and well-led. This is a step up from the overall good rating it received during the inspection-before-last.

Care home residents and their families gave positive feedback about their experiences at the facility. One said: “I was always greeted with friendship and compassion, and the attention to detail relating to care was, in my opinion, exemplary.”

Another said:”Brilliant care home, everyone friendly, like one big happy family. Cannot fault anything at all.”

A third resident said: “I cannot recommend them highly enough. All staff and the team have been so loving and kind and not just professional."