10 October 2019
During a routine inspection
Asher House is registered to support up to 20 older people, some of whom may be living with dementia. At the time of our inspection, 13 people were being supported at the service.
Asher House provides accommodation on two floors with access via a stair lift. It is situated in a quiet residential area in Walton on the Naze.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found.
The provider failed to safely maintain the environment to ensure it was safe for people living in the service. Appropriate checks were not in place by competent staff to ensure the environment was safe.
People's medicines were not managed safely.
People’s risk assessments were not updated in line with their current needs and risks. Where people had additional physical and mental health needs, care plans did not always inform staff how to manage these well.
Mental capacity assessments were not always completed where capacity was questioned.
Staff had not received training in how to support people living with dementia, despite of some people living with this diagnosis. We made a recommendation about this.
The environment of the home had not been adapted to ensure that it met with the needs of people living with dementia.
We made a recommendation about this.
Staff were instinctively caring but did not always have the skills and knowledge to undertake their role.
Care plans were not reflective of people’s current needs and did not reflect support they required.
The service did provide meaningful activities for people.
End of life care plans were not always in place for people. We have recommended end of life care planning for people to be developed further.
The service was not well led. Systems were in place to monitor the quality of the service; however, these were not effective and failed to highlight concerns raised during the inspection.
The provider had failed to put systems in place to support the registered manager to have oversight 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 service was requires improvement (report published 2 October 2018).
Why we inspected
This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating.
Follow up
We will request an action plan for the provider to understand what they will do to improve the standards of quality and safety. We will work alongside the provider and local authority to monitor progress. We will return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.
Special Measures
The overall rating for this service is ‘Inadequate’ and the service is therefore in ‘special measures’. This means we will keep the service under review and, if we do not propose to cancel the provider’s registration, we will re-inspect within 6 months to check for significant improvements.
If the provider has not made enough improvement within this timeframe. And there is still a rating of inadequate for any key question or overall rating, we will act in line with our enforcement procedures. This will mean we will begin the process of preventing the provider from operating this service. This will usually lead to cancellation of their registration or to varying the conditions the registration.
For adult social care services, the maximum time for being in special measures will usually be no more than 12 months. If the service has demonstrated improvements when we inspect it. And it is no longer rated as inadequate for any of the five key questions it will no longer be in special measures.