Day Centre Enter & View

News - 23 July 2024

Healthwatch Richmond was commissioned by Richmond Council to engage with a review of their day centre provision. We found that day centres provide essential care for service users and respite for carers but there is room for improvement.

Services delivered from day centres provide meaningful support and activities for older and disabled residents with care and support needs. Day centres also provide valuable respite to unpaid carers. However, day centres have changed over recent years with fewer people using them and people presenting with higher levels of need.

We were asked to gather information about the day centres, focusing on the facilities and the experience of clients and carers, through a series of listening events. Prior to our visits, Richmond Council had conducted their own informal engagement with staff so we did not speak to staff at this time.

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Healthwatch Richmond undertook approximately 40 staff hours of visits to day centres to make observations of the care provided and speak to clients and unpaid carers at the following times: 

  • The Access Project: visited on 16th May from 10am -3pm 
  • Sheen Lane: visited on 8th May from 10am - 2:30pm and 10th May from 9:45am-11:30am
  • Woodville: visited on 9th May from 9am - 2:30am

Our observations and interviews focused on: care, transport, meals, activities and facilities.

During the visits, we spoke to clients and conducted a semi-structured interview focusing on: transport, food, activities, facilities and the care they received.

Preliminary visits also took place in the preceding weeks and our observations from these meetings have been included in the findings.

We would like to thank Richmond Council for their support and continued collaboration with Healthwatch Richmond. We would also like to extend our thanks to the staff, clients and carers of the Richmond Day Centres for engaging with us on this project.

Our Observations 

We will publish our full report when the Council progress their work on modernising the day centre provision. Some of our key findings and conclusions from this work however are below:  

  1. The day centres provide essential respite to carers not offered elsewhere in the community. 
  2. There was appropriate provision of care, socialisation and meaningful activities; however, the quality of this varied between the three day centres. 
  3. There was a good level of care but a need for more interaction between staff and clients. 
  4. There were good facilities at all centres but there were underused or required maintenance. 
  5. The transport to the day centres is essential for clients to access the centres as well as provide longer respite to carers. 
  6. The food provided was appropriate but the quality differed between the centres. 
  7. There was sometimes a lack of communication between the day centres and carers. 

 

If you have any feedback or experience of Richmond day centres, please get in touch! 

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