Last updated 9 October 2018
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.

The inspection was unannounced. This meant that the provider and staff did not know that we would be visiting. We visited the service on 5 September 2018. We carried out a further two announced visits to the home on 11 and 12 September 2018 to complete the inspection. The inspection was carried out by one adult social care inspector.

Prior to carrying out the inspection, we reviewed all the information we held about the service. The registered manager completed a provider information return (PIR). A PIR is a form which asks the provider to give some key information about their service, how it is addressing the five questions and what improvements they plan to make.

We contacted Northumberland local authority safeguarding and contracts and commissioning teams prior to our inspection. We also contacted Healthwatch. Healthwatch is an independent consumer champion that gathers and represents the views of the public about health and social care services in England. We used their feedback to inform the planning of this inspection.

We spoke with eight people and three relatives during our inspection. We also spoke with two relatives following our inspection by phone. We spoke with the nominated individual, the operations manager, the registered manager, a team leader, four care workers, the supporting activities coordinator, two housekeeping staff, the laundry assistant and cook. We also spoke with two care workers on night duty to ascertain how care and support was provided at night.

During the inspection we met and spoke with two podiatrists and a podiatry assistant. We also contacted a medicines management technician, an advanced nurse practitioner from the behaviour support team, a coroner’s officer, a member of staff from an external consultancy agency, a reviewing officer from the local NHS Trust, a member of staff from the local hospice and a registered manager of a local domiciliary agency to obtain feedback about the service.

We viewed three people’s care plans. We also looked at information relating to staff recruitment and training. We examined a variety of records which related to the management of the service.