• Care Home
  • Care home

Archived: Roby House Care Centre

Overall: Requires improvement read more about inspection ratings

Tarbock Road, Huyton, Liverpool, Merseyside, L36 5XW (0151) 482 4440

Provided and run by:
Meridian Healthcare Limited

Important: The provider of this service changed. See new profile

Latest inspection summary

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Background to this inspection

Updated 18 September 2021

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

We visited the service over two days. One inspector and a dementia care specialist nurse advisor (SpA) visited on the first day and one inspector visited on the second day.

Roby House 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 service had a manager registered with the Care Quality Commission. This means that they and the provider are legally responsible for how the service is run and for the quality and safety of the care provided.

Notice of inspection

We announced the inspection visit from the car park prior to us entering the service. This was because we needed to obtain information about COVID-19.

Inspection activity started on 14 July 2021 and ended on 21 July 2021. We visited the service on 14 July and 21 July 2021.

What we did before the inspection

We used the information the provider sent us in the provider information return. This is information providers are required to send us with key information about their service, what they do well, and improvements they plan to make. This information helps support our inspections. We reviewed the information we received about the service since the last inspection. We sought feedback from the local authority and professionals who work with the service. We used all of this information to plan our inspection.

During the inspection

We spoke with ten people who used the service and four family members about their experiences of the care provided. We also spoke with the registered manager, members of staff including care workers, ancillary staff and the maintenance person. We reviewed a range of records. This included people’s care records and multiple medication records. We looked at the recruitment files for staff employed since the last inspection.

After the inspection visit

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic we limited the time we spent on site. We requested records and documentation to be sent to us and reviewed these following the inspection visit.

We continued to seek clarification from the provider to validate evidence found. We reviewed a range of records relating to the safe management of the service including audits, safety checks and staff recruitment and training records.

Overall inspection

Requires improvement

Updated 18 September 2021

About the service

Roby House Care Home provides accommodation, personal and nursing care for up to 55 people in one adapted building over two floors with lift access to the upper floor. At the time of our inspection 53 people were living at the service.

People’s experience of using this service and what we found

Risk to people’s safety was not always assessed and managed. Some people did not have access to a nurse call bell and others did not have the ability to operate one, however measures were not taken to identify and mitigate risk.

We were not fully assured that Infection prevention and control measures were followed to minimise the risk of the spread of infection. Equipment used to support people and some carpets and furnishing were dirty and unhygienic. Cleaning schedules for equipment had not been followed and daily checks failed to identify and mitigate the risk of the spread of infection.

We have made a recommendation about staffing. People were kept safe by the right amount of staff; however, the deployment of staff was not always effective to fully meet people’s needs.

Medicines were managed safely. Staff with responsibilities for managing medicines were suitably trained and competent.

The recruitment of staff was safe. A range of pre- employment checks were carried out to assess applicants fitness and suitability for the role.

Managers and staff understood their responsibilities for protecting people from the risk of harm and abuse. Allegations of abuse were well managed. People told us they felt safe and staff treated them well.

Checks on the quality and safety of the service were not always effective in identifying and mitigating risk. Some required checks had not taken place and others failed to pick up on areas for improvement.

Care was planned in a way that promoted person-centred care, however the delivery of care was not always person-centred which impacted on the quality of care people received.

People, their representatives and staff were involved and engaged and there was good partnership working with others. Information about events and changes to the service was shared with relevant others in a timely way.

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

Rating at last inspection (and update)

The last rating for this service was good (published 19 October 2018).

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

Why we inspected

We received concerns in relation to people’s safety. As a result, we undertook a focused inspection to review the key questions of safe and well-led only.

We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. Ratings from previous comprehensive inspections for those key questions were used in calculating the overall rating at this inspection.

The overall rating for the service has changed from good to requires improvement. This is based on the findings at this inspection.

We have found evidence that the provider needs to make improvement. Please see the safe and well-led sections of this full report.

You can see what action we have asked the provider to take at the end of this full report.