Enter and View Report: Beechside Residential Care Home

In June 2025 we visited Beechside Residential Care Home, a residential care home with 37 beds. There were 35 female residents at the time of our visit, many of whom required support for living with dementia.

Most residents at Beechside are thought to have dementia and the home provides general and EMI (‘Elderly Mentally Infirm’) care. Some residents do not have a formal dementia diagnosis but may have shown signs for at least 1.5 years; we were told that residents “have to be at a certain level (of dementia) to be with us”. 

The home also provides end-of-life care, which managers explained is because they want residents to be able to continue living at the home if possible and have support in managing this from district nurses. Relatives can sleep over in a resident’s final hours as the home will make a bed available.

Summary

During our two-hour Enter and View visit to Beechside Residential Care Home we felt that it seemed to be a care home that was well-run and functioning effectively. Beechside is an older building and not purpose built but effective management and maintenance of the environment seems to have removed most of the barriers these types of buildings present. The areas of the care home we saw looked clean, well decorated and maintained with no strong odours. 

Staff are long serving including senior management staff and other key staff throughout the home according to management. This stability enables staff to build effective relationships with residents, families and each other. All the interactions we saw between staff and residents seemed appropriate and staff were skilled in communicating with residents and clearly knew them well. 

Residents seemed well cared for, appropriately dressed and comfortable in their home. We spoke to multiple family members whilst at the home who gave us positive feedback about their experiences. Family members told us that their relatives were happy and safe at Beechside. 

Recommendations 

We make the following recommendations for Beechside Residential Home

• We would recommend providing a menu designed in an easy read font as the menu we saw displayed was small with a cursive style font. This can be challenging for people with visual difficulties which often co-occur with advanced age and dementia.
• Management advised us that empty frames on the wall are soon the be filled with activities schedules for residents.

Positives and good practice

We found during our visit to Beechside Residential Care Home examples of positives and good practice which included but were not limited to: 

• The food on offer received almost unanimously positive praise from the residents and relatives we spoke too. The chef was praised specifically by some residents, and they seem to be doing a great job.
• There were multiple examples of a dementia friendly environment such as clear easy read signage on the doors, a large clock with date and time for orientation and the use of dolls and teddies to allow residents to use their own caring skills whilst soothing them.
• Staff are long serving including both key leadership roles in management and throughout the home such as the chef.