Background to this inspection
Updated
10 April 2015
We carried out this inspection under Section 60 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 as part of our regulatory functions. This inspection was planned to check whether the provider is meeting the legal requirements and regulations associated with the Health and Social Care Act 2008, to look at the overall quality of the service, and to provide a rating for the service under the Care Act 2014.
This inspection took place on 16 February 2015 and was unannounced.
The inspection team consisted of two inspectors and an expert by experience who had experience of caring for someone with dementia.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. We looked at information received from relatives and other agencies involved in people’s care. We also looked at the statutory notifications the manager had sent us. A statutory notification is information about important events which the provider is required to send to us by law. We also spoke with the local authority but they did not share any information with us that we were not already aware of.
We spent time observing care in the lounge and communal areas. We also used the Short Observational Framework for Inspection (SOFI). SOFI is a way of observing care to help us understand the experiences of people who could not talk with us.
We spoke with four people who lived at Avon Court and four visiting relatives. We spoke with seven care staff, the manager, the deputy manager and the operations manager. We looked at five people’s care records and other documentation related to people’s care including quality assurance checks, management of medicines, complaints and incident and accident records.
Updated
10 April 2015
This inspection took place on 16 February 2015 and was unannounced.
Avon Court is a purpose built residential and nursing home which provides care to older people including people who are living with dementia. Avon Court is registered to provide care for 64 people. At the time of our inspection there were 55 people living at the home.
A registered manager was not in post as the registered manager named in this report was no longer at the service. A new manager had been appointed and their application for registration was being assessed at the time of our visit. A registered manager is a person who has registered with the Care Quality Commission to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act and associated Regulations about how the service is run.
People told us they felt well cared for and safe living at Avon Court and staff knew how to keep people safe from the risk of abuse.
Staff received training in areas considered essential to meet people’s needs safely and consistently. The manager told us they had identified staff required further training to make sure they continued to keep their skills and knowledge updated.
Care plans and risk assessments contained relevant information for staff to help them provide the personalised care and treatment people required. However, we found occasions when delivery of care did not support people’s needs and people did not always have the necessary treatment or equipment to protect them from associated risks.
People told us staff were respectful and kind towards them and we saw staff were caring to people during our visit. Staff protected people’s privacy and dignity when they provided care and asked people for their consent before care was given.
Staff understood they needed to respect people’s choices and decisions. Assessments had been made and reviewed to determine people’s capacity to make certain decisions. Where people did not have capacity, decisions were taken in ‘their best interest’, although records of these meetings and decisions were not always kept to support the action taken.
The provider was meeting the requirements set out in the Deprivation of Liberty Safeguards (DoLS). At the time of this inspection, one application had been made under DoLS for people’s freedoms and liberties to be restricted. The manager had contacted the local authority and was in the process of reviewing people’s support in line with recent changes to DoLS to ensure people’s freedom was not unnecessarily restricted.
People were given choices about how they wanted to spend their day so they were able to retain some independence in their everyday life. Family and friends were able to visit when they wished and staff encouraged relatives to maintain a role in providing care to their family members.
Some people we spoke with told us they were supported to be involved in pursing their own hobbies and interests. Activities were available for people living in the home, however it was recognised further improvements were required. The staff member responsible for providing activities was enthusiastic and we saw they spent some time with people and were engaged in one to one activities during our visit.
Regular checks were completed to identify and improve the quality of service people received, although some checks had not been completed for some time. The provider completed checks to assess the service people received which fed into an action plan to ensure improvements were made in the quality of service provided.
You can see what action we told the provider to take at the back of the full version of the report.