Dear Cressida<br><br>I am sorry to hear about your mothers disappointing stay with us recently. We really appreciate your feedback raising these issues and hope you will give us a chance to put things right. As you raise many issues, I would like to comment on each point you raise so that people get a fair reflection of the service we provide:<br>1)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;General communications with family. You are right, good communication with family members is indeed, extremely important. We have ample staff on duty at all times who are there to help as well as more senior staff being available either face to face or by phone or email to rectify any issues that may arise. <br>2)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Guide to service users/family. Again, you are right, there is a need for a guide, which is why we supply one. This should have been in your mother’s room on arrival but unfortunately it seems to have gone missing. This wasn’t noticed prior to your mother’s arrival and I can only apologise.<br>3)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bring your own wheelchair.  This is most certainly not necessary. We have an ample supply of wheelchairs and other equipment available for residents to use. <br>4)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Label your clothes or else laundry lose them. Yes, indeed we do ask that all clothes are labelled prior to admission as we have up to 65 other people in the building who are also having their clothes washed every day. If clothes are not labelled, it is really not surprising that they will take longer to find their rightful owner than if they are. <br>5)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Bring in supermarket meals for staff to prepare.  This is certainly not normal practice as we cook a varied range of home-made meals every day.<br>6)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Give resident autonomy re GP. Unfortunately, this is totally outside of our control. Our GP visits once per week and meets with any resident who needs to see him. <br>7)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Ensure Call Bells are working. I am absolutely certain that our call bells are working and are responded to. During her 12 day stay, your mother used the call bell 290 times and these calls were answered within 3 minutes on 214 occasions. The few occasions where the response time was a little longer generally coincided with busy periods. Unfortunately, we are unable to guarantee an instant response to every call bell alert.<br>8)&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Improve housekeeping. I can only apologise if you feel the housekeeping was less than perfect and I will be taking this up with the Housekeeper to understand the issue and correct any issue going forward.<br><br>We are confident that we provide a very good standard of care to a wide variety of elderly clients at a value for money cost. It is a pity that these issues were not raised during your mother's stay as I am sure they would have been simple to rectify and made her experience a more satisfactory one.