Archived: Ashgrove Residential Care Home

Updated 6 November 2019

The inspection

We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (the Act) as part of our regulatory functions. We checked whether the provider was meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Act. We looked at the overall quality of the service and provided a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.

Inspection team

The inspection was carried out by one inspector.

Service and service type

Ashgrove Residential Care Home is a ‘care home’. People in care homes receive accommodation and nursing or personal care as a single package under one contractual agreement. CQC regulates both the premises and the care provided, and both were looked at during this inspection.

The home had a registered manager. Registered managers are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

The inspection was unannounced.

What we did before the inspection

We reviewed relevant information that we had about the service. We looked at the last inspection report and any enforcement action we took. We also contacted professionals involved with the service for information. This information helps support our inspections. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with four people, two relatives, both of the providers, the registered manager, the deputy manager and three staff. We reviewed five care plans, which included risk assessments, and four staff files, which included pre-employment checks. We looked at other documents such as medicine and quality assurance records.

Updated 6 November 2019

About the service

Ashgrove Residential Care Home is a residential care home for up to 26 older people. At the time of the inspection, the home was supporting 19 people with personal care.

People’s experience of using this service

Improvements had been made with medicine management. Systems were in place for effective temperature control and staff that administered medicines had their competencies checked. For people that received medicines when needed, protocols were in place to administer them safely. However, we found instances where medicines stock did not correspond to people’s medicine records. We made a recommendation in this area.

Improvements had been made with risk assessments. Risk assessments included mitigation to minimise risks in relation to people’s health conditions and circumstances.

Quality assurance systems were in place to ensure people received high-quality care that included auditing care plans and medicine management. However, audits for medicine management would need to be made more robust as this did not identify the shortfalls we found at the inspection.

Pre-employment checks were carried out to ensure staff were suitable to care for people safely. Safeguarding procedures were in place and staff were aware of these procedures.

Systems were in place for quality monitoring to ensure people’s feedback was sought to improve the service. Staff were positive about the management of the service.

For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk

Rating at last inspection

The last rating for this home was requires improvement (published 12 April 2019) and there were breaches of regulation in relation to risk assessments, medicine management and good governance.

Why we inspected

We carried out an unannounced comprehensive inspection of this service on 6 March 2019. Breaches of legal requirements were found. As a result, we served a warning notice to ensure the home was compliant with risk assessments, medicine management and good governance.

We undertook this focused inspection to check to confirm they now met legal requirements. This report only covered our findings in relation to the Key Questions, Safe and Well-led, which contained those requirements.

The ratings from the previous comprehensive inspection for those Key Questions were looked at on this occasion and were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection. The overall rating for the service has remained requires improvement. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Ashgrove Residential Care Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.

Follow up:

We will speak with the management team prior to this report being published to discuss how they will make changes to ensure they improve their rating to at least good. We will work with the local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If any concerning information is received, we may inspect sooner.